Tags: | troubleshooting | BSOD | crashing |
2007-07-19 09:34
The Strangest Computer Problem I've Ever Had (part 1)
I started writing this up and realized it was going to be a long story, and probably boring to some of you, so I figured, why not stretch it out and make it two entries in order to extract as much pain as possible? Also, I haven't finished writing it yet but I have to go to work. Look for part 2 this evening.
The Problem
My girlfriend and I like to hang out in the living room of our apartment and watch movies while we use our laptops for studying, gaming, and Internet surfing. It may sound nerdy, but when you don't have cable, watching a limited selection of the same DVDs just doesn't hold one's attention well enough to not have a laptop in front of you. So, a few days ago we were sitting there doing our routine and both of our laptops got the dreaded Windows blue-screen-of-death within about 10 seconds of each other. At first I thought this was a very odd coincidence, possibly caused by overheating, and I figured we would be on our way with a quick restart of each computer. I was wrong. Each computer restarted just fine, but within 2 minutes they both had crashed yet again, with the same BSOD message. Again thinking that maybe they were somehow both overheating, I shut down the computers for 10 minutes and turned on the air conditioner. Third try, with obvious ventilation - again both crashed, faster this time. What was I dealing with? It seemed completely unlikely that this was a coincidence that both computers would have the same problem at the same time, so I immediately started thinking about the possibilities of a virus or worm - despite the fact that it would have to bypass our firewall and sneak past active and up-to-date virus detection software. I switched the TV over to our home theater PC, also in the living room and using the wireless network, and it was plugging along fine, no crashing - not likely if our network had a virus problem. I walked into the office and switched on the monitor to my desktop system - also doing fine, no blue screens there. Meanwhile, my girlfriend has been turning her laptop on and off, attempting to get a stable boot of Windows, with no luck - in fact, her computer was now getting a BSOD pretty much continuously and faster, before Windows was even finished loading. At this point a sense of dread was filling me, because I fear the worst, that somehow both of our machines had hardware failure at the same time and this is the result (what can I say, I'm a pessimist). I decided to leave the problem until the next day, hoping a good night's rest would somehow magically fix the computers.
- Kevin
Kevin (at) Upcsite (dot) Net
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