A few weeks
back, my work computer mysteriously started to give me the blue-screen of
death. I run Windows XP Pro and have all
sorts of development beta and CTP software running. My first instinct was to think that one of
these configurations was the culprit, running betas and CTP’s isn’t always a
good idea because of stability issues but hey, it’s what I do. So I get one of the Microsoft error dialog
boxes stating that there was an error and would I like to send this to
them. Honestly, I always say no – don’t
ask why. So after blue-screening a few
times, the dialog comes up and I finally click yes, send the error, so
Microsoft can begin researching a fix.
Well, wouldn’t you know it, within a few seconds it came back telling me
to go to Logitech’s site because they already had a fix (it’s for corrupted
drivers with the wireless keyboard and mouse that I use). WTF, all this time and there was already a
fix out there and I didn’t know. Good
job you procrastinator! So I download it
and all is well now.
Now, around
the same time, my home computer starts doing the same thing, blue-screening and
prompting me with the error dialog. My
home system has the exact same Logitech wireless keyboard and mouse. So, hey, it’s the same thing right? After ignoring it for a few more weeks, I
notice that the blue-screens are coming more often usually when my computer is
idle. To bring it back to life, I need
to do a hard-reboot. Well, yesterday I get
home and go to my computer and guess what, have to reboot. But once the computer is back up and running,
it suddenly reboots on its own. Now to
further kick me in the balls, it freezes during boot up… fuck! Now I begin to worry. I have a website that I’m developing and all of the code is on that
local drive, I haven’t backed it up in months [Insert dumbass comment
here]. So I try to reboot again, this
time it allows me to boot up in safe mode with networking, THANK YOU Microsoft! It works.
I get in, zip up my files, and transfer them to the server I have in my
closet (long story) and just then, my computer just turns off. Ok, all I need to do is reboot in safe mode
again, install the fix from Logitech and all my problems are solved,
right? Nope.
After doing
just that, I rebooted normally and all was going well for a full 2 minutes
before the computer died again. Fucking
blue-screen! One thing that I noticed
with the last few start ups is that during the initial loading of Windows, that
error dialog box comes up. Weird thing
is I thought the Logitech fix solved that.
Again, I reboot and when the dialog box comes up I click on it and it
says that there is a hardware problem. Damn!
Now the error is vague stating that it
could be any of the following: the motherboard, cpu, ram or one of the hard drives. That’s every important piece of hardware in
my machine! So the thing that pissed me
off the most about this entire message was the following line (not exact but
close enough): “Please turn off your computer and contact the manufacturer for
support”. Now why does this piss me off? Because I built the computer myself. Now, who the hell do I contact? I guess I’ll just send myself an email and
hope that I have the right answer for myself.