one post from the defunct transitions blog on typepad
woke up to a blue nightmare today. for those of you who are not familiar, a BSOD is not a BLAH-Somet(ing)-OR-DIE. the Blue-Screen-o-Death is a serious error for the (Windows) operating system, outpaced only by an infection with a Trojan or other persistent malware. a BSOD means that the OS non-gracefully handled the software faults it was designed to handle. usually the BSOD is traceable to a low-level s/w fault, like in a device driver, ie, the software that runs your video card, for example, and which talks to the OS. or a recent piece of h/w is incompatible with the OS.
this is the 2nd BSOD in 2 days, an omen of impending Doom9. today was no exception to that rule. the computer refused to complete a boot to a video screen. no display = S.O.L. saturday superbowl sunday i'll spend a few hours replacing the MOBO with one i removed two weeks ago.
you ask, "why did i remove a MOBO two weeks ago?" an attempt to troubleshoot a no-boot situation in an Intel desktop board, and the opporutunity to test a two-time RMA'ed ECS MOBO from august 2007.
turns out the (admittedly older) video card gave up the (Norton) ghost finally. had to replace it. its not always easy to identify when the video card goes funky. is there ever good timing for things like this? naw. never.
at least i dont have to work from home, or even work for pay right now. wrong! the job search is a full time unpaid job, any equipment malfunctions result in setbacks.
i'll be back to my regular self soon enough. i just wish i didnt have to deal with so many h/w s/w issues. something unexpected happens at least every 4-6 months. its enough to drive a poor creature insane.
UPDATE...
- retired the ECS board.
- rebuilt the machine with the intel desktop board. made the cables all nice and pretty. the Intel DG965WH is a good unit with Firewire & USB, pci-e slot, built in (decent) video adapter (but only 2.6 on Vista score haha), network adapter, built-in sound card with SPDIF, even has a speaker to beep the BIOS error codes -- the darn ECS elitegroup board has none.
note to Intel (China):
make the CMOS reset jumper a little closer to the board's center. its hard to grab through 4 SATA cables.
just when i imagined it was safe to sit down and get caught up on a weekend's worth of email & continue work on the résumé/job search .... BEEEEP, or BEEEEEP - BEEEEEP on reboot !!! and worse, the machine just powers off after a couple of minutes.
- the problem? defective Patriot DDR2 SDRAM. on reflection, had I replaced the RAM once in the past 14 months, i might have avoided a variety of problems. it's hard to gauge how long RAM has been defective, but it also is very hard to pinpoint RAM issues until the beeping happens.
- with the new 2 X 2GB RAM in place, my baby is now singing, and not in the castrato range.
- one caution though:
do a VISUAL CHECK before and after powering up!
if the cable from the board to the heatsink processor fan stops the movement of the fan blades, your nose will start to detect the odors of hot silicon, and the BIOS will report a core temp at 98C. ooooouch.
repositioned the cable and the temp dropped 57C in about a minute.
alas, may eventually have to replace the CPU because of heat damage.
