Nerve Endings Firing Away

I should have known that fragile equipment such as computers and cars have astounding listening powers. Almost hours after I made the post on recycling laptops by Dell, my own laptop decided that it would be a great to try out that program. After innocently trying to update my video driver (ATI Mobility Radeon 7500) and wireless adapter (Intel PRO/Wireless LAN 2100 3B), I got the blue screen of death. The first laptop had died a more painful and sudden death.

After going through the countless charades of restarting in various modes, I managed to get it back up again only to realize that I could never restart my laptop again. I delayed the inevitable for two days until the Windows Update forced me to restart. After ensuring I had the backup for all my important stuff, I decided to dive headlong into resolving the problem. If you have ever doubted the adage – To err is human but to fuck things up takes a computer – then I suggest you trying to troubleshoot your crashing PC. Kindly note that although I mentioned the alleged causes of the crash upfront doesn’t necessarily mean that I had the sixth sense of knowing it then.

After tearing my hair out until none was left (it is called the Corps of Cadets cut in College Station and I am told its cool), I restored the laptop back to its factory settings. Restoring factory settings is like telling a kid to go back to its room for misbehaving hoping that the kid will learn; unfortunately neithr do kids nor do PCs. After sitting through couple of hours as it restored, I got the blue screen yet again and now I had no hair left to pull out (oh no! don’t even go there…no, I mean it). By this time, I had managed to figure out that something was amiss with the video adapter but the bugger was caught in a vicious circle as it kept restoring to the factory settings (the errant video adapter was part of the initial setup). The recommendation most popular on the net was to start the PC in safe mode and fix the problem but the smart ass who wrote that didn’t realise that you couldn’t fix major problems in safe mode.

Don’t ask me how but I finally managed to get it to stop doing that and after lot of soul-searching on the Internet, I managed to restart the machine in plain vanilla pre-Internet age VGA settings as opposed to the safe mode. Now I could safely update my driver and get on with my life, precious hours of which had been lost. I tried various different fixes right from IBM fixes to latest updates from the manufacturer (ATI Technologies) but the video adapter had simply given up. The laptop was out of warranty, conveniently just after its three years of warranty period was up and any fixing would involve damages on my financial state and still wouldn’t rid me of a constant state of uncertainty. The costs of uncertainty aren’t properly accounted for in the economic literature (or might be; I just don’t know).

So the best solution (or the optimal one at that point of time) was to grant the current laptop its wish for recycling (although its not a Dell) and give the new kid on the block a chance. I have ordered the uber-efficient Thinkpad T60 customized with a DVD burner and 60GB HDD; my third Thinkpad but only the first brand new one. It is expected to ship in two weeks but for sake of my sanity, I am glad that the current one is stable and working except for the jerky video display, of course.

Any solutions to fix the old one so that I can sell it off ultra-cheap to a student are more than welcome. Revenue sharing can be discussed.