Dan Schulz
09-08-2007, 05:35 AM
How can I say this??? Let us count the ways.
Not too long ago, I finally got around to replacing my seven year old 20GB Maxtor hard drive with a brand new 250GB Western Digital. Earlier this week, when I finally got my new copy of Windows XP Pro, I decided to make the swap. The installation of XP Pro onto my brand new hard drive went fine, the OS was verified as genuine and updated, and my applications were in the process of being installed. In addition to all that, I was transferring data files (images, documents, Web projects and the like) from the CD and DVD backups I had made to the new hard drive and was copying the last 1.25GB over via CD (two discs) when the monitor went haywire. And by that I mean split screen mode, lines flashing at perpendicular angles all across the screen, and then nothing but a frozen screen. I couldn't back out, couldn't log off of Windows, nothing.
So I did a hard reboot of the system via the power button (the only other option I had at that point in time was yanking the power cord out, which I was loathe to do). Now the computer boots up, but doesn't get past the boot screen - it won't load the OS, it won't recognize the drives (hard disk, floppy drive or the DVD burner) or anything. Given how the monitor went bonkers, I'm wondering if the integrated video card on the motherboard got fried. Obviously I'm hoping that's not the case (I doubt it's the 933MHz Pentium III processor, but that's another possibility as well). I have a feeling I may have to finally give this machine the "Dirty Harry" treatment (sans the DVD burner and new hard drive of course) and get a new machine which I can't afford right now.
Anyway, here I am on a machine with a 1.1GB Intel Celeron processor that's sitting on a board which supports ONLY 256MB of RAM. Why does this have to always happen to ME?
Not too long ago, I finally got around to replacing my seven year old 20GB Maxtor hard drive with a brand new 250GB Western Digital. Earlier this week, when I finally got my new copy of Windows XP Pro, I decided to make the swap. The installation of XP Pro onto my brand new hard drive went fine, the OS was verified as genuine and updated, and my applications were in the process of being installed. In addition to all that, I was transferring data files (images, documents, Web projects and the like) from the CD and DVD backups I had made to the new hard drive and was copying the last 1.25GB over via CD (two discs) when the monitor went haywire. And by that I mean split screen mode, lines flashing at perpendicular angles all across the screen, and then nothing but a frozen screen. I couldn't back out, couldn't log off of Windows, nothing.
So I did a hard reboot of the system via the power button (the only other option I had at that point in time was yanking the power cord out, which I was loathe to do). Now the computer boots up, but doesn't get past the boot screen - it won't load the OS, it won't recognize the drives (hard disk, floppy drive or the DVD burner) or anything. Given how the monitor went bonkers, I'm wondering if the integrated video card on the motherboard got fried. Obviously I'm hoping that's not the case (I doubt it's the 933MHz Pentium III processor, but that's another possibility as well). I have a feeling I may have to finally give this machine the "Dirty Harry" treatment (sans the DVD burner and new hard drive of course) and get a new machine which I can't afford right now.
Anyway, here I am on a machine with a 1.1GB Intel Celeron processor that's sitting on a board which supports ONLY 256MB of RAM. Why does this have to always happen to ME?