The BSOD

Commonly referred to as a virtual nightmare wrecking havoc of such massive scales, this is an unwanted, detestable and traumatic catastrophe that every sane PC user would want to prevent, and avoid, from ever occurring to him.

The BSOD, or otherwise termed as the Blue Screen of Death, is usually, to everyone’s utmost dismay and disappointment, the sign suggesting that your poor PC has crashed and needs some serious reformatting.

Well, that was exactly what happened to me on the day that I returned from Camp Temasek (on the 5th December) when I booted up my computer at night.

First, the monitor didn’t on. Suspecting that the connections were loose, I ensured that all the switches were fixed properly. On the second attempt, the LCD did budge, but now, I noticed that the CPU was so obediently quieter than ever. There were no crackling noises, but just a barely audible, constant hum. I began to get nervous. These were telltale signs of incoming trouble looming ahead.

Alas, when everything did seem to be working orderly, a black screen appeared. I was appalled. It said that some system file was corrupted or missing, and I needed to manually insert the original Windows XP Setup CD-ROM (which I don’t have) and press the ‘R’ key to repair the damned file.

In a useless bid to get the system to start up, I frantically restarted the machine several times, went into system settings only to find irrelevant information, and repeatedly jammed the ‘R’ key, all to no avail.

I’m either unfortunate or Windows just hates me, but I’ve crashed my HP PC three times this year (including this). To complicate matters, I didn’t know what the hell went wrong! All except that it couldn’t be a virus, worm or spyware, I’m 99% sure. I treated my computer with so much patience and care, defragmenting, updating with Windows Updates, using disk clean-up, scanning, and it just crashes on me all of a sudden, unexpectedly, and definitely to my horror.

Luckily, all my documents were all backed up in CDs.

Well, I sent it for reformatting. It turned out to be a blessing in disguise, for I got the original OS, Service Pack 2, and amongst all else, a much needed ram upgrade. From a measly 256MB ram, I added 512MB at a reasonable cost of 95 bucks to upgrade to a comparably fast 768MB of DDR ram.

The difference in performance was immediately felt. Startup and shutdown time was greatly reduced, loading IE was thankfully very much quicker, and document processing was all speeded up.

The BSOD, something that, at times, is beyond human control, unless you get a Mac. It just happens, and you’ve got to accept your fate, just like how I accepted mine thrice.

I hope this will be the last and the last forever to haunt me.

To hell with you BSOD!
Ian