2004-03-15
As I've become more competent at fixing modern Windows type computers, I've been getting more jobs on the side fixing them. Usually it's just word of mouth - somebody calls me up who was referred by someone else. This most recent job has been extremely frustrating - I've spent the better part of 3 days dealing with a very erratic Celeron 800 running Windows XP Home.
Got rid of viruses, small improvement. Got rid of spyware/adware, small improvement. Did the Windows Update - blue screen of death after the reboot. Tried dozens of permutations, same deal every time I got to the two last updates.
In addition to solving the crashes, I was supposed to upgrade the RAM from 128MB to 256MB. So I put the extra stick in, and the crashes get even worse. I pull the original stick, and just put the new one in - it starts running way better - even the Windows Updates finally work. It never occurred to me that the RAM could be the problem. Argh!
Gotta put a plug in for MemTest86 - a brilliant program that scans memory in the way that the BIOS and Windows should, but don't. It's counting up the errors on that bad stick right now - amazing that Windows managed to run at all. But isn't that always the case?
Got rid of viruses, small improvement. Got rid of spyware/adware, small improvement. Did the Windows Update - blue screen of death after the reboot. Tried dozens of permutations, same deal every time I got to the two last updates.
In addition to solving the crashes, I was supposed to upgrade the RAM from 128MB to 256MB. So I put the extra stick in, and the crashes get even worse. I pull the original stick, and just put the new one in - it starts running way better - even the Windows Updates finally work. It never occurred to me that the RAM could be the problem. Argh!
Gotta put a plug in for MemTest86 - a brilliant program that scans memory in the way that the BIOS and Windows should, but don't. It's counting up the errors on that bad stick right now - amazing that Windows managed to run at all. But isn't that always the case?
