LuCaspeRobin + Thomas ;-)

...you may ask! There have been no posts here for over three weeks. Are they all still alive? How are they doing? Is life so dull that there is nothing to tell? The answer to all of these questions, and more, in this post!

Bad thingz have started to happen to our "Old Faithful" - i.e. our computer. First it didn't want to start up properly, only after having booted a couple of times would it fully load Windows. It seemed to choke on something or the other. So I unplugged the mouse tablet we have (excellent tool this!) from our USB-card, and then things really started to go wrong. Earlier I had already unplugged the webcam, as this seriously impeded the performance of the PC. Last night I wanted to check out which hardware - or software - caused Windows to stop loading when almost done. I got the desktop, with all the icons and toolbars, but when going to load either the soundcard software, the AVG Anti-virus program, the ZoneAlarm Firewall (both excellent, but most importantly, free software) or the Webcam programs, it hickupped and just stopped dead in its tracks. After a while of moving around the mouse and hitting the keyboard in pure frustration, I either got several "blue screens" after eachother or it just started making terrible clicking noises. Only remedy: power-out. Ctrl+Alt+Delete didn't even work...

So I proceded to start Windows in "Diagnostics Mode" - hit F8 during boot - and one after the other uninstalled all my software, starting with the webcam. No sollace, still didn't wanna finish loading Windows. Then followed the mouse tablet, ZoneAlarm, AVG and finally, after three reboots, I uninstalled the soundcard-software. Tadaaaaa!!! Success! Windows finished loading and I could use it as normal - at least, as before...

I then reinstalled AVG and ZoneAlarm and this proved not to be the cause of the hickups. It still works now, though without the mouse tablet, no webcam and no sound. I suppose its now time to seriously invest some time into doing an inventory on what specs I'd like when buying (parts for) a new computer. Doesn't need to be a top-of-the-line, expensive PC, just one that does what our "Old Faithful" does today, but then a little better, faster and with less hickups! Then maybe it can be reinstated as server for a local network or something!

Posted by Sebastiaan Naafs - van Dijk | top