Saturday, September 11, 2010

It happened to me

So my whole adult life, basically, I've heard about people having computer problems. Viruses. The screens on their laptops failing. Hard drives crashing. Fried memory. But when it came to my own computer, I had this bizarre, magical yet persistent belief that I. Was. Bulletproof. I've had my own machine since 2002 and been problem-free the entire time.

Until the past few weeks. There were signs. I got the infamous "Blue screen of Death" a few times. My SO convinced me that the problem had to do with the fact that my virus protection expired two years ago, so I bought new virus scanning software. I ran several scans, it found a few things, and I figured that would be the end of it. Then. THEN. One day, I got the BSOD three times in a row. It happened so fast that I didn't even see the second time, it was still rebooting from the first time and I was turned around in my chair, talking to SO.

He messed around with it for a little while, imparted to me the surprising fact that it was not only possible to clean a computer but imperative to do so, and...he didn't fix it. Every time we tried something, it got progressively worse. We tried implementing some of the suggestions of our WoW friends, most of whom work with computers, but didn't get very far. It's fried. Windows now won't load at all. I've got to take it somewhere to get it fixed, but until then, it's just sitting on my kitchen table like a big, expensive paperweight.

So if there are no blog posts for a while, that's why.