Sorry for the radio silence, but my computer was down, and most of the day was spent sorting it out. Some may recall that my second monitor stopped displaying a while ago, and I finally decided that there must have been some software change in a Fedora kernel that was causing the problem in an admittedly old video card. So I broke down and ordered a new one for about a hundred bucks.
So I replace the card, and on first starting the machine, I get three long beeps, which on MSI motherboards indicates a memory issue. I unseated and reseated the memory sticks, and that problem went away. But the machine wouldn’t boot, or even POST. I know there was power to the card because the fans were spinning, but no signal was going to the monitors. I tried removing and reseating the card, but no joy.
So I decided to put the old card back in and see if I’d done something new to the machine to make it not POST, but it booted fine. And not only that, but it woke up with both monitors. So I seem to have somehow unknowingly solved the problem, but now I’ll have to RMA the new card. Which is somewhat disappointing, because I was looking forward to a video upgrade. Though, to be honest, I’m not sure I would have seen any difference for anything I do, which is mostly write, spreadsheet, and web surf.
And of course, in the process of doing that, I’ve developed a new problem, in VirtualBox, which I need to run Windows for running my trading platform. When I try to boot Windows, I get:
“VirtualBox can’t enable the AMD-V extension. Please disable the KVM kernel extension, recompile your kernel and reboot (VERR_SVM_IN_USE).”
I did a search, but none of the offered solutions seem to do anything (No, I haven’t tried a complete uninstall/reinstall, or kernel recompile, because I was hoping for something that was less of a PITA).
We’re doing a rib roast with lobster tails for Christmas dinner, and I’m getting fatigued from the Christmas music, but it’s the only thing we can agree on to watch. There is a “A Christmas Story” marathon on one channel, and a “Die Hard” marathon on another one, so we may break down and watch one or both of them. Anyway, plenty of Christmas fare over at Glenn’s place.
Merry Christmas!
I think you made the wrong choice regarding the computer and roast Christmas dinner; you could have put the computer in the oven instead of the roast and thereby had a unique dinner, plus solved your computer problem. 🙂
Seriously though, best of luck fixing your system. I had slightly similar issue over a decade ago; the computer began having intermittent problems booting; sometimes, it’d boot fine, other times, I’d get error beeps and the screen stayed blank. I tried swapping out darn near everything, but it made no difference – and the failure to even get so far as loading BIOS got more and more often, then all the time.
A friend of mine thinks it was a “tin whiskers” failure in the CPU or motherboard. Replacing those would have cost more that the system (already years old) was worth, so I built a fully new system instead. I sincerely wish you better luck than I had.
Troubleshooting computers makes me hate God, the universe and myself, so in this situation I would settle for a pitcher of mimosas and Ingmar Bergman’s “The Seventh Seal.”
https://youtu.be/iUXBevWxjbA?si=cRaOGPaUt9V08kaG
Anyway, good luck and Merry Christmas is.
Speaking of computers, October 14, 2025 is looming.
Yeah, yeah and yeah, one should be running Linux by now and all of that, but the predominant OS out there is Windows 10, and I lot of people and institutions are faced with not only the expense but also the inconvenience of purchasing and installing the software they need on a new computer in the new year.
Are people and their institutions just going to take this? Is Elon Musk going to shame Microsoft for wasting the Federal government a lot of money? Is the EU going to push back on this? Will Microsoft blink?
The end of support for a Windows edition is meaningless, so long as you use something else for security. Even Norton will do, for most people. My Windows XP laptops still do their jobs. Even the Windows Vista one is still working fine. I replace computers when they break, or when I have a new specific task set that deserves its own machine. This Win10 unit I’m using at the moment was bought to support a 22″ XP-Pen unit. I expect it to continue doing so. My big complaint is about crappy Chinese laptop batteries.