Funny service call today

[stiltman]

I get a call from a vendor here in town and he tells me he's at his wits end with this SBS 2003 Prem server he installed. Wanted to know if I would come out and take a look at it. I said no problemo

Single P4 running RAID5 with SATA drives and 2 (suppose to be hot swap) HDDs running ATA133 with cases. CPU usage is running at 55% average, RAM is at 2 GB physical average. Wow!!!! The vender and the doctor asked if they should install a second CPU? I looked to see what was using all the CPU cycles and RAM....Thinkin it was going to be SQL or Exchange or heck even AD....Nope. It was ATI's stupid PCI-X monitoring and mod software.....50+% CPU!!!!!!!

Uninstalled all the ATI crap except for the actual drivers...Then uninstalled the motherboards wireless Hotspot software..... Tested the HDD in a few different configs that never showed in the BIOS and said get a new one cause this one is bad.....CPU was down to less than 1% average and RAM was down to 1gb physical...Spent the next 3 hours consulting on what was wrong with their current setup.

[thecoalman]

....Nope. It was ATI's stupid PCI-X monitoring and mod software.....50+% CPU!!!!!!!

One of my biggest pet peeves is all the uneeded crap installed by hardware, printers seem to be the worse. Do I really need to know what the ink levels are 24/7, do I really need a FTP like program running 24/7 to upload pictures to some website for others to view..... seriously, my printer added just such a program. I was so disgusted I almost took the damn thing back. Creative is the next biggest offender, adding about 3 or 4 non-essential's to the start-up......

[Soopafresh]

I like it when the end user gives you a scowling look, as if you're the cause for their woes.

[thecoalman]

I like it when the end user gives you a scowling look, as if you're the cause for their woes.

That's like my brother, AMD2200 512MB, decent enough that he was able to run DOOM 3 on it (once I cleaned all the shit out). He's got a young kid who just leaves stuff running, wife installs all kinds of crap like some e-mail client that gives you smilies, printer, scanner, camera software..... never defragged the drive. on and on.

"This computer is crap" he tells me "Look how slow everthing runs.".

[bazooka]

It could be a firmware issue. We had an issue with a certain version of firmware where ram and cpu was completely maxed out on our servers. A firmware update fixed it.

[stiltman]

It could be a firmware issue. We had an issue with a certain version of firmware where ram and cpu was completely maxed out on our servers. A firmware update fixed it.

Nope...everything was up to date. BIOS, Firmware and Drivers for everything.


Just crappy software running on a box that shouldn't be running crappy software. Servers don't need this crap.