sigtrent (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} sigtrent) wrote,@ 2008-03-27 16:42:00 |
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Tales of woe and joy
Huge thanks to my intrepid wife and my good friend Dennis for saving my techno bacon!
The wife: Ann got some awesome grades this quarter after a metric ton of work by her and a fair bit of support from me. I’m quite proud considering how brutal her classes were.
The Computer: So we splurge and get new computers, build it yourself action. Very cool but I’m a newb so things don’t go so smooth for me. It starts with a struggle to get the CPU fan in place and cooling the CPU properly. I get it built, start installing and odd errors start happening. Seemingly at random the thing blue screens with various issues.
Round 2: I re-install the OS, but not much luck. Just when it looks stable it crashes like crazy.
Round 3: Anne says start over from scratch and I do that but still installing stuff pretty rapidly. Same errors after another 6 hours of installs are done. This time it crashes really hard and won’t reboot.
Round 4: Anne says start over and this time only install one driver at a time manually. I do this but none the less more random errors. I suspect/fear hardware problems.
Round 5: Anne takes the wheel and does a clean start using the patented Anne methods… still no luck, it randomly crashes. She is now on the hardware bandwagon.
Round 6: While I’m working Anne calls in my long time friend Dennis to help save me from land of the luddites. They re-install. They proceed to switch out every last piece of hardware in the box, including buying a new motherboard. Nope! Still crashing randomly.
Round 7: Ok, not every piece of hardware… one remains, the most expensive in the box, the CPU. We make a run to the store for another $400 item, hook it up and presto… no more errors. Probably my own fault for first running it without the fan firmly in place (it was close but apparently that doesn’t count in computer land). I only broke it just enough that it would crash only when heavily taxed… like when actually running software instead of just installing it. Wheee.
Huge thanks to my intrepid wife and my good friend Dennis for saving my techno bacon!
