Computer Tale
Added: March 19, 2006

Originally posted on NYRA forums on September 23, 2005.

Oh, it was a tale! There I was on the innocent evening of Tuesday, August 23, in the middle of replying to the Last Song thread incidently, when my computer spontaneously restarted and up came the....

BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH!!!!

*hysterical screams in the background*

Some stupid shit about IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL or one of those stupid, nonsense warnings. Meh. Whatever. So I restarted the fucking thing to get on with my business. As soon as it came up, another...

BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH!!!

(okay, I'll stop that)

Eventually, the thing popped up telling me my file system was corrupted. Fuck. How'd that happen? This thing was working great for over a year, no problems whatsoever. I eventually tried the System Restore, but oh no! Didn't work. Damn thing won't load up at all anymore. So it became clear the annoying task of reloading XP was necessary, so I got out the CD for it that came with my computer and tried that. Bunch of files did not copy right, but managed to eventually, after three days of trying, to get the stupid thing to load up again. Not well, though.

Quickly! Scrambled around for a writable CD anywhere. Save those files! Save those files! Alas, my system was a sinking ship and I needed a fucking life boat, man. Aha! Found one. Fuck! Can't copy files to a disk in Safe Mode. Needed Safe Mode because the BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH appeared if I tried anything else. Corruption was still everywhere. So got files ready to copy while in Safe Mode. Grabbed what I could! Stories I've been writing and updated significantly since my last My Documents CD save back in March. Downloaded songs! Onto the lifeboat, friends! Save yourselves from corrupted system! Science Village files! And, let's not ever forget, logs from NYRA chats! Onto the writable lifeboat you go! Then restart in normal mode and start copying, waiting with bated breath and hoping the copying would complete. Almost finished.... Done! Files on CD! Woo hoo! Later found out I forget to save some kind of important stuff, but meh. Can live without it.

My important stuff safely on a CD, I didn't hesitate so much to poke around in the various setup crap on the computer, hoping to find anything to pinpoint the problem. Corrupted file system? Hmmm. To get the thing working again, told it to leave current file system intact so I could rescue these files. Not necessary now. Monday, August 29, with eyes shut, Windows XP blue setup screen before me requesting an NTFS partition format, my finger came down on the F button.

What the fucking hell?! Installation files still weren't copying right off the XP CD. So I tried the CD that came with my dad's computer. Same exact thing. Still trouble copying files. At one point the thing did actually get all the way through setup and a very blank WinXP came back, files gone. Fucker still didn't work right. Before the format, I had tried all kinds of stuff to figure out the problem, including this diagnostics utility thingy it came with that came back with lots of problems, but I paid them no mind at the time since I assumed the trouble was the files that weren't properly copied off the installation CD.

Weeks of this! No help from Dell because they're retarded. Yeah, it's a Dell. That's the problem right there, eh? For not one but TWO board of directors meetings had to borrow my sister's laptop. So many fruitless attempts at reinstalling everything. My dumbass dad kept thinking it was the CDs having the problems. No. I knew better. It was a hardware issue. Running a check with Ctrl+Alt+D or something upon boot up revealed my hard drive is perfectly fine! No trouble there.

Nights after boring ass nights gazing at this useless machine, just two months past its warranty expiration date, knowing there was some problem. But.... what?

Interesting! Another day of irritating the hell out of myself with the unfounded hope this thing would snap back to life with no problems. Ran the diagnostics utility. Holy shit! There it is! There's the problem.

Error 2F00:0119

SYSTEM MEMORY FAILURE!!!!!!!!!

That's it!!! That's fucking it!!! My fucking RAM is faulty! Ooh, that evil, evil RAM chip. Ruining my computer by deciding to be broken. My dumbass dad still believing the problem was installation disks even after I pointed out that everything pointed to the memory. It makes sense! THAT's why the installation files aren't copying right! THAT's why the computer was still acting all screwy! THAT's probably what caused the corruptions in the first place! THAT's why nothing was getting better!

Ooh, new RAM chip on sale. After a few more days spent trying to decide how to go about this, eventually contacted Dell by phone (ugh!) to ask about a bit I found on their website about memory carrying a lifetime warranty. Right there in plain English. Memory carries a lifetime warranty. So replace it for free, you fucks. But nooooooooo. Because it was the memory that originally came with my system, it expired with the year warranty like everything else. Cheap fucks. Oh, well. Wound up with a nice 512mb chip that arrived yesterday. Snapped that thing in, yanked out the piece of shit faulty one that cause this mess. Evil RAM! Evil! Evil! Evil! Started up everything, all passes on the memory tests in the diag utility, every installation file copied perfectly, no trouble at all, spent yesterday reinstalling drivers and shit and reconnecting to Internet, returning my safe happy files from the rewritable CD to the system, plus a bunch of others on a few other CDs I had. Be free, my friends! You may return to your home! New RAM and twice as fast as the old one! Rejoice!

At last, I came running. W W W dot Y O U T H R I G H T S dot O R G. And shouting. NYRA! NYRA! Rushing into the forums. Here I am!

*crickets*


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