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Long time faithful readers may recall that back in October 2005, Andi’s old Emachines computer (dubbed “Bessie”) went tits up hard-core when Windows ate itself. Even our friend Rob, an engineer incredibly savvy in the Deeper Mysteries of Windows, wasn’t able to fix it. That was reformatted with a wonderful donation of a Windows XP Pro disk from our friend Tobey, and became Bessie 2.0. Two months later, it began convulsing and frothing at the CD-ROM drive, and promptly became an ex-PC (it was merely resting). It had turned out to be, at the time, the mother board dying. It was certainly out of warranty and extended coverage, and was laid to rest. A quick and annoyed trip to Best Buy later, we had a new Hewlitt Packard, and Bessie 3.0 rode off into the sunset of November, 2005.
This morning, after checking e-mail, she shut down her Bessie 3.0, and after work today, it wouldn’t display video. Odd. Reboot. The fan whirred astonishingly loudly, compared to usual. Odd. No keyboard lights. New keyboard? Nada. New monitor? Nada. Rebooting? Sure, by pulling the power cord out or using the manual switch in back–power cycle by the button in front? Nada–no response. Being judicious computer and gadget shoppers, we always get at least the middle-tier service package. Wasteful? Perhaps, but you’re only paranoid if the technology gremlins aren’t out to get you. We took it back to Best Buy/Geek Squad. Extended service!
Er, nope. We somehow forgot to buy it, this time. Confirmed. Oops. Another mobo bites the dust, and Bessie 3.0 joins her sisters. I need to order a new one from Dell…
Bessie 4.0 will be an XPS 410, bypassing my XPS 400 from October 2005 by bounds, for only $90 more. Dagnabbit.
If Andi is late in e-mail replies or whatnot, that’s why. She can do everything on my PC, or our laptop, but she dislikes working long on the laptop or on my funky ergonomic keyboard.
How’s this for insane? We had decided that my 512 RAM chip (same models, everything across the board as Andi’s box, which always had worked, responded, even sounded flawless) should go to her to give her a full gig of RAM. The machine boots, but with no video, at all. Odd. Try swapping back the old 256 chip instead (the old PCs have only two slots on the board). Video, but… Windows failed to load because it can’t find:
c:\windows\system32\config\system
Huh? WTF? We have no Windows media (or much anything right now) due to being technically in-move so after getting blank CDs at Target, we get a Recovery Disk burned from an .iso found at some site. Sure enough, I can get in. But… her user is gone. The computer name is gone. Profiles, gone, and the entire system appears defaulted back to the OEM Windows installation. The main logon is passwordless and named “Owner” now, rather than Andi. The PC name is reset. All network settings, and all her personal data all still there in the folders for the user profile, however.
Gets better: the machine is “wobbly” now, in the words of our Microsoft engineer friend Rob Beddard, who was utterly dumbfounded by what happened as I talked to him about it and worked on the system. Two vaguely plausible long shots: power surge as I powered down or up to install the new RAM, or “shite bad luck”. He’s very British. Any and all response to… anything on the system is very clippy and choppy now, regardless of what RAM is installed. Andi is in the process of backing up all her data to CD right now (1/2 way done so far).
Sunday I’m reinstalling Windows clean on her machine. So much for my day off… stupid freaking disastrous PC luck this week. Assuming there isn’t some larger hardware issue (like the board, or who knows what), that should fix it. Rob suggested that something in the registry getting hosed could account for the twitchy current behavior. If not… Hell, more debt. Sigh.
My main computer, which I use for work, home, and leisure, has up and died. Like a parrot. This morning about an hour into my day–busy, busy day–my hard drive locks up, and nothing moves on screen. The drive goes sccccreeeeEEEECH and then makes a small popping sound, followed by an immediate power cycle. I can’t get into it via any of the safe modes, can’t get to BIOS, nada, zilch, zip. Every now and then, very rarely, the drive would make a vague sound like that. Andi’s PC really doesn’t (they’re identical Emachines t2865’s). Decent, fast, and solid.
Because mine did that now and then I have always religiously backed up things, just in case. Except my music (way, way too many CDs converted to mp3), and except recently, due to the insanity of our move. All my personal junk is stored on my poor old server, locked in storage across town, in some box somewhere buried amidst everything else. All my work stuff thankfully is backed up in a nice encrypted online place, so no worries. But… shit. Two and a half years of stuff and saved stuff… poof.
I think I’ll need to go down to Best Buy in Tukwila tomorrow to get a new one. Or maybe something from Dell.com. Sigh.
To top it all off, my Linksys wireless router for some reason 40 minutes later up and lost *all* it’s settings. Why? Who knows. I farted about with it trying to get it to synch on the cable modem, with no luck. Need to try again tonight. Right now, just one PC right into the modem…
