This afternoon, while my daughter was helping me with some house tidying, my home laptop BSODed. It does that now and again, and I went ahead and cycled the power …
… and it went into Startup Repair mode. And chugged along on that for about 30 minutes. And then informed me it couldn't fix it.
Since then I've gone through the various options allowed through Startup Repair mode. I've checked the memory (all clear), I've gone back a system checkpoint or two. Nothing seems to fix the problem.
On the plus side, I'm fully backed up. Between +Backblaze and being able to (at an extreme) take out the existing HDD and get a chassis for it, I'm not overly worried about losing any of my data files.
Problem is, at this point none of my other options are particularly easy or pleasant. I could dig through various stacks and (hopefully) find the original system restore disks for the machine, and then the Win7 upgrade disks, and spend a day going through that particular exercise. And then go through reinstalling all my applications and doing a data restore (sigh) and hope that whatever caused the problem doesn't zorch things again.
I could take the machine down to a PC repair place — e.g., the Geek Squad folks at Best Buy — and ask them to have at it. Figure on some low 3-figure fee to (hopefully) get the OS problems resolved (if they are OS problems), hopefully (but not assuredly) without doing a HDD wipe and forcing me to restore my data and reinstall my programs. or at least tell me that it's insoluble. And that assumes that the nature of the problem is identifiable and that it won't recur.
Or I can buy a new laptop. This particular rig is going on three years old, so there's a bit of justification as to that. I'd still need to reinstall all my apps and restore all my data (sigh), but that would be, for the nonce, the end of it.
There are times when living in the cloud sounds more and more attractive …
In the meantime, I have my work laptop I can do 80-85% of my stuff from, but that excludes playing City of Heroes (not a recommended thing to install), doing my weekly podcast (without installing the software for that, either), or doing the planned podcast with +Les Jenkins (since it's verboten to install Skype on the work system).
And anything I do will need to wait until Sunday, since tonight I've already started drowning my sorrows, and tomorrow is taken up cleaning house for a dinner party.
And, yes, this is some serious #firstworldproblem stuff, but it's annoying nevertheless. Thanks for listening. #ddtb
See if there are system diagnostics built into the bios – some machines have that. it could tell you if your hard drive and memory are okie-dokie. Alternatively boot up from an Ubuntu disk and run the hardware diagnostics therein. If the hardware passes, it might be worth an attempt at reinstallation. If not (bad hard drive most likely scenario, assuming the cpu is not overheating) then you'll know what to replace.
If the CPU is overheating, use some canned air backwards through the cooling fins to eject dust. Do not overspin the fan.
The Windows Startup Repair has a memory-checking mode. Alas, the BIOS does not.
It's a brand-new CPU fan — I did have some problems with it a few weeks back that led to some overheating, and I had to replace it. The system has been operating okay since then, but it's possible that led to the present problem.
If you want to go completely over the wall, there are workstation laptops coming to market.
Doing a bit of research (a 30 second Google search), I probably don't need what a workstation laptop would give me. My current laptop is a 17" screen ASUS gaming rig (albeit relatively low-end), which has more than served my purpose.
Harrumph. Also realized this impacts my Calibre-based book collection. Not that I'm likely to run out of unread books any time soon, and it should be eventually recoverable, but it does add a bit of further irk.
Oh no! Not the books, too! My condolences.
@DeAnna – Well, they are all-nearly-mostly backed up. Though I do need to research how to restore a Calibre library to a new computer (among other things, like moving an iTunes library, moving a Picasa photo library …).
To speak of the devil, I think the screen on my second-hand Nook has died. Luckily, I’m backed up.
@De – Ugh.
I’ve been compiling a list of the library setups I need to migrate over to the New Machine. My Calibre book setup, iTunes, my home photo work library under Picasa. Not looking forward to that aspect of all of this.
More and more, the cloud, for all its privacy and not-under-my-direct-controllability, keeps looking more and more attractive for circumstances like this.
It does. Remember when your computer going down meant the death of email? It’s like remembering an uphill-both-ways kind of past.
@De – Yeah, I was thinking of email in particular. And moving Thunderbird message stores to a new computer was, as I recall, a real PitA.