December 27, 2004 | My name is Grumplestiltskin
My desktop computer refuses to boot. It acts like it’s going to, and then at the last minute it reverts to the maddening blue screen and starts all over again.
I have no idea what’s wrong with it.
I know it’s a piece of crap but it’s my piece of crap and–all things considered–I’d rather it be an operative piece of crap than a defunct piece of crap that leaves me curled up in the corner, rocking back and forth, wailing “I haven’t backed up the kids’ pictures for months.”
I have a feeling this is going to be a terrible, horrible, no good very bad day….
Posted by Mir @ 10:54 am
December 27th, 2004 at 11:46 am
Even in Australia?
Sorry, had to say it. That sucks, I wish I had a magic fixes all things electronic wand to lend you, but alas it has gone missing.
December 27th, 2004 at 11:52 am
Yikes, I’m going to run home and back up all my stuff onto my portable hard drive. IM me if you need specific ideas for getting your computer back up and running.
December 27th, 2004 at 2:17 pm
see if you can boot into safe mode. as the puter is booting, a bunch of text should pop up telling you what to press to get to safe mode…usually it’s f8. if you can get into safe mode, you probably have a nasty virus or something.
December 27th, 2004 at 2:40 pm
I have some things you can try as well. Rather than busy up your comments, you can IM me if you are still looking for ideas. I would be more than happy to try and help out.
December 27th, 2004 at 3:43 pm
don’t worry…even with the blue screen you can always have someone slave the harddrive and get yo stuff off it
December 27th, 2004 at 4:32 pm
Completely off-topic — your reference to a “terrible, horrible, no-good,very bad day” …what children’s book was that from, again? I seem to remember that refrain from the dark recesses of my mind …. and I just…can’t…place…it….
… anyway, li’l buckaroo, hope the day gets better. Sending you good cyber-thoughts.
December 27th, 2004 at 4:43 pm
Karen the book is by Judith Viorst (or Judy Blume) Alexander and the Horrible… etc
December 27th, 2004 at 6:37 pm
The blue screen of death - everyone’s worst nightmare. Do you know about freecycle? You may be able to score a new to you monitor that way. Alexander is one of my favorites too- I quote him often
December 27th, 2004 at 7:52 pm
I think you may need a new hard drive. If you don’t have a warranty on your computer (in which you’d get a free new harddrive), you can get one for ~$200 (that is at least how much I paid, I may have gotten ripped off!) and the computer will run like new. Good luck, i know how annoying it is!
December 28th, 2004 at 10:32 am
He doesn’t need a new hard drive. It’s probably a driver that is causing it to fail. Go into safe mode, go to the start menu, accessories, sytem tools and select system restore. Hopefully you have it turned on so you can revert back to a pint when the machine was last working. Just select a restore point before the machine crapped out.
What most likely happened is you insatlled something on the machine or updated a driver or installed a security patch that the system didn’t like. Instead of trying t figure out what it was (unless you want a tech to do it) using the system restore point is the easiest and quickest method.
Dont listen to people telling you to buy a new hard drive or slave it and install a new os. or clean up a virus that is not really there (most viruses are not harmful and wouldn’t do this sort of thing).
let me know how it goes.
December 28th, 2004 at 1:16 pm
I second nunya’s suggestions, as long as you can get into safe mode. Otherwise, slaving the hard drive is the best way to try to recover data.
December 28th, 2004 at 1:51 pm
But why go out and spend money on a new HD when it isn’t a HD issue? There is absolutley nothing wrong with her hard drive.
Depending on the blue screen, it could be something with the OS (like I siad, a driver issue) or something with the memory. Hard drive problems do not give consistant constant problems. Hard drive problems are usualy cause random problem (like a system freezes when trying to perform a write operation - but that could be a motherboard/system bus issue). Again, I highly doubt it is the hard drive.
Do not go and spend extra money on something you do not need.
December 28th, 2004 at 10:33 pm
at any rate, let me know how this turns out.