What would cause this?

[vefatica]

This is way off-topic, but ... with so many experts in one place ...

Last night there was a power outage ... about an hour ... woke up to find my Win7 logon screen (and all my clocks off). I thought everything was OK until tonight when I discovered two things I can't explain.

1. I have a program, d:\uty\shelllinks\desktop0.exe which takes me to the services desktop on demand. I had used it several times a day for the recent 3 weeks of uptime. Tonight, it would not run ... access violation ... but if I copied it to **any** other directory, it would run OK. It compared perfectly to the original copy in its build directory, and after I copied the (identical) one from the build directory to u:\shelllinks\ it began to work from there as well.

2. I have another program, d:\uty\jpchop.exe which is run as a "policy" by my mail server (under the SYSTEM account). It reformats mail from the forums a little. It had run flawlessly for the last several weeks. Tonight I discovered that it had been crashing all day (so I missed several emails from the forums). It too compared perfectly to the copy in its build directory. And when I copied the (identical) one from the build directory to d:\uty\, it began working again.

What the heck could have happened? Could Win7 have been trying to use a corrupt copy of them ... from some cache (after a power outage!)? Perfetch and superfetch are both set to "2" (boot only). That's the only sort of thing I can think of.

Moments ago I simulated a power outage by (literally) pulling the plug. The problem did not recur.

 

[Jay Sage]

Vince,

The one thought I have is that the original power failure may not have
been a clean one. That is, the power may have dropped part way and then
come back some and then dropped again, etc. I've had experience where
that messes things up much worse than when the power just suddenly goes
away. (In fact, I've experienced problems where the power just flickered
without actually going off.)

Of course, that begs the question of just what on your system is messed
up in such a way as to cause the symptoms you're observing, which are
very strange.

-- Jay

 

[jabelli]

I don’t know, but I suggest a UPS. I haven’t run a computer without one for more than 15 years. I like the APC “green” ones that cut off some of the other outlets when the “primary” outlet falls below a certain current level (e.g. the computer is asleep). I have mine set up so the monitors and sound system are cut off when the computer is asleep or off, but the modem and WiFi remain on.