Posted in Project 365

JESUS IS COMING SOON! MARANATHA LORD!
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Hi friends, if you need to silence the music just hit the play/pause button on the player in the right sidebar, just below the black horse and the copyright notice.

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Well, as you probably know, I haven't blogged for awhile.  Here is why... once upon a time, on February 9th or 10th, computer froze on screen saver.  In the middle of blending one photo into the next, it stopped.  I found my self staring at a picture of my daughter with strange scraggly lines across her face.  On closer inspection I saw it was a picture of my frozen snowball bush blending in with a picture of my daughter.

I wiggled the mouse... nothing.  I replaced the mouse batteries and wiggled again... nothing.  I tapped random keys on my keyboard... nothing.  I hit Ctrl+ALT+TAB... nothing.  I hit Ctrl+ALT+Esc.... nothing.  I hit Ctrl+Esc.... nothing.  I frantically hit Esc, Esc, Esc, Esc, while holding down the Ctrl key.  Then again without holding down the Ctrl key.  Nothing worked, I was stuck staring a picture of my sweet daughter with the bare, frozen branches of a bush scrawled over her face like the scribblings of a toddler.

I hit the power button... nothing!  The darn thing wouldn't even turn off!  I held down the power button, and still nothing.  Then in desperation I unplugged the stupid thing!

Then, I plugged it back in and tried to restart it.  It opened to its usual start up screen, except that vertical lines in sets of four covered the background.  It tried to start in safe mode, but then shut down.  An error message flashed for about 1/2 second... "Wonderful!" I thought, "What in the world did that SAY!  Do they honestly think we can read that fast?" (Don't ask me who "they" is).

Anyway, to make a long story short, (if it isn't too late for that already), after repeated attempts to start my computer... and many pointless attempts to read that error message at lightning speed.  I grabbed my digital camera,  I decided I would photograph the error message in an effort to figure out what was wrong.

Here is what it said:

Notice the lines running up down and the screen?  Those were there all the time, except that on occasion when the background was black, they turned into columns of dollar signs.  "Fitting!" I thought, "Since this will probably end up costing me columns of dollar bills!"

Well, since the computer was still under warranty, I called Costco's technical support the next day... and was talked through the process of trying to run a system restore.   It failed, so now I was left with a computer with an empty hard drive in addition to whatever the original problem was!  (Thanks so much Techy!)

Oh well! HP technical support got on the line together with the Costco techy.  They decided I should ship my computer to them.

So I waited two or three days for Fed Ex to deliver a box, with packing materials and return shipping paid.  Then I packed the computer, filled out the forms and my husband dropped my computer off at the Fed Ex store on his way to work.   Then I waited... and waited and waited and waited.

Finally, on February 26 I got my computer back.  I have spent the past few days restoring files (which were all backed up, since I've been through computer crashes before!), reloading programs, and getting things back to where they were.

The scary thing is... I don't know what caused the problem, so how do I keep it from happening again?

If it was a virus, well I am supposedly protected... but it could also have been a program that wasn't compatible with VISTA .  My daughter did unsuccessfully try to install an online game earlier that day... so now no one downloads anything without me checking out system requirements and compatibility first.

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Comments

Posted by jugglingpaynes

I would have flipped!
And today's lesson - backup, backup, backup. Good for you for taking care of that.

ryc - Yes, it can be hard to teach a perfectionist! Especially when I'm also a perfectionist learning to lighten up!

Peace and Laughter,
Cristina

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Posted by Anonymous

Sounds like your video card went bad. If something like this happens in the future and you have a desktop machine, before you erase everything try opening the case and reseating the video card. And if you have a friend with computer parts, try putting in another video card. It also could have been a power supply problem to the monitor.

Your technique for reading the error code was very clever! I wouldn't have thought of that.

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Posted by Anonymous

Oh that is very frustrating! I myself had computer problems with my hp laptop a couple months ago and it was th hard drive. Mine was only just still under warranty, phew!

Hope you have many happy, trouble free years with your computer now. My thought is this type of thing should only happen once to a person!!
Jodi/SHS

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Posted by SCDplus

Hooray! You are back online! I'm sorry to hear about your computer - been there before!
Jan

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