Earlier tonight, the power went out. Our whole block was apparently affected, despite the fact that it wasn’t unusually hot and there wasn’t a cloud for miles. After about an hour, the power came back up.
My computer didn’t.
it would boot up normally as far as starting windows, and then just went to a light blue screen. No text, no errors, no…anything. I tried unplugging everything except the video lead and power, thinking it might be a misbehaving USB device (this has happened in the past), but no luck.
To be fair, my video card has been acting a bit flaky of late, so I was beginning to suspect that it might be in need of replacement soon. In the meantime, I rummaged around in my desk drawer and managed to extract a replacement.
So I’m currently up and running on an nVidia GeForce 7600 GT, a video card that was state of the art when I bought it six years and two computers ago.
Ah well. I get my first paycheque on June 15th, and then I can see about getting something that will at least let me finish Portal 2. (Sometime in the not-too-distant future, I planned on replacing the entire system, but what I want costs a bit more than I’m ready to just drop yet, especially with at least three out of state trips in the next few months.
zoethe
Argh! How frustrating! My friend Steve lost a bunch of electronics to a Michigan brownout a few years back. I wonder if the power change finally killed your video card.
Anyway, good luck getting it all back up and happy.
anaisdjuna
That sucks. Seems like The U is always pullin’ stuff like that just when you think you’re about to pull out onto Easy Street for a minute. Dang.
celticdragonfly
Oh noooo! Good luck in getting that fixed. Sometimes it really boggles me how quickly stuff gets outdated -- I keep thinking but this computer was great when I got it! And then Miles tells me we need to upgrade.
heathrow
Ugh! How frustrating!
vila_resthal
Upgrades? We ain’t got no upgrades. We don’ need no stinkin’ upgrades! We got a COCO3 and we freakin’ LIKE IT!
Well, in any case, staying “state-of-the-art” is frustrating as well as costly. I don’t even recall how long ago I had a new computer built for me. I suppose I’m about a decade behind, as per usual.
I make do with what I have, as long as it can cope with what I ask of it. Of course, when you’re looking to dispose of cast-offs, Lyn is always looking for something more up-to-date. 🙂
Give Larissa a big hug from both of us, and consider yourself hugged as well!
Vila
keristor
I agree, an nVidia GeForce 7600 GT sounds pretty modern to me (I think something like that is what my “top-end” machine has, certainly not much more recent). I think that machine was built for me about 3 years ago now, but wasn’t “cutting edge” even then (it was running Ubuntu 8.4, but got upgraded to 9.4 use the SATA controller; it doesn’t need much in the way of video since it’s normally run remotely).
Rob Wynne
It’s one of those things where what you do with the machine matters a lot. The 7600GT is a perfectly good video card for everyday computing. But I’m a gamer, and to a gamer, the 7600GT is five or six generations behind the current top-end GPUs.
Context is everything.
billroper
You might consider pulling a new set of drivers down for the possibly-failed video card and having them on the machine. Then reinstall the old card and see if it boots up as a standard VGA card and load the new drivers and see if you survive the process. It’s about an hour or so of “harmless fun” that might get the old card to decide to work again.
asg_qa_s7
Reboot ’05 ’11
That’s two of us. The Professora’s disk died, so that was *our* weekend. Commiseration.