This is weird...

[plonq]

LJ is blocked by our corporate net nanny web filters, but as near as I can tell, Semagic can still post entries for me. I have been a little light on updates lately, so here is the executive summary.

My desktop computer is still broken. The symptoms are pointing very strongly toward the video card, but I can't rule out memory/motherboard either, since I am fairly certain that this is lightning damage. The computer fires up and runs, but after running for awhile the display turns to garbage and everything freezes. Sometimes it will freeze after a minute of use, and other times it will go for a full day before it dies.

[Poll #1042167]

THIS WEEKEND...

We moved dronon into his new house yesterday. He had a little too much stuff to fit in the rental truck, but by loading the overflow into cars and vans we managed to move everything in a single shot. While the move went generally well, I still managed to break the leg off a cabinet, and put a hole in the wall of his basement stairwell. The latter was the result of a sofa-bed that needed 1/2" more clearance to get around the corner. Even though the recalcitrant sofa bought itself a little extra corner space at the expense of his wall, it still only made the corner because it had enough flex in its wood frame to let me force it around the post.

I think that I mentioned a couple of times that I used to do this kind of stuff professionally. I never claimed that I was actually good at it.

Comments

[dingotush.livejournal.com]

If it is lightning damage, the fault is unlikely to be confined to a single component, and you may find other problems become apparent over time (months). I'd suggest trying the video card in a known-good system (ideally a none to important one - not Atara's) to see if it is at fault.

[atara.livejournal.com]

Well, he tried replacing it with my old video card, since I just got a new system... But it was a different type of slot or something.

[pfcottontail.livejournal.com]

Looks like there's only one other video card to test with........ >.>

Hey, is AMD coming out with quad-core any time soon? That should maybe drop the prices on dual-cores??

[duncandahusky.livejournal.com]

See I look at it this way: if it's a lightning-induced problem, it may or may not be any specific issue and the problems may or may not go way. You could spend hours trying to troubleshoot, but to my mind too many variables have been introduced into the system,. That's why I lean to replacing the lot of it.

[neverville.livejournal.com]

I have a couple ancient PCI video cards that I use (and have used) but heh you could probably find your own cheap replacement at Computer Renaissance. If you've ever seen Windows XP run in vanilla VESA or in 256-colour mode, that's what giving Windows XP an old Mach 64 is like :P