Well, so much for upgrading my computer's video card easily. The system is one year old, and I did a full uninstall of the old card's drivers and then shut down, installed the new video card, and powered on.

Disaster! Windows XP was in a completely unusable state. Random blue screen of death up the wazoo, all with memory related errors (page faults, IRQL less than or equal and so forth). Safe mode? Exact same problem. Start with last working configuration? Ditto.

So I dig out the XP installation CD and work my way into the text recovery console, which then wants me to log in to the system's XP installation for file access. Instant crash. OK, next option try a "repair installation". Goes OK until it goes to start XP to copy more files. Instant death.

Eventually I figure maybe the memory has gone bad, so I pull out all but one stick (I use 4). Sure enough the system actually boots - but crashes within minues. Eventually with enough playing around with memory I manage to get it to boot long enough to copy all my data to another partition. At that point I try a few windows updates and, eventually, get it working pretty stable. I try installing the new video card driver.

But all is not good - the new video card refuses to start up and when I go to display properties... all of the tabs that are supposed to be there (to configure desktop backgrounds, screensavers, resolution etc) are completely missing. Even with no function card driver *something* should be there! Even trying to get the old video card to work proves pointless. And it turns out it's not completely stable - after 10-15 minutes it continues to crash with various errors. After 6 hours of troubleshooting, I give up. Time to wipe the partition clean and reinstall from scratch.

So far the OS installaton has gone OK, and I sit here right now waiting while it installs the first batch of 89 Windows updates.

Oh, now it wants to install IE7.

Sigh...

random blue screens would indicate a memory error. it could also indicate soon to come hard drive failure.

if you get through the install process, id run memtest86 to verify your ram is up to the task.

is it too late to suggest rebuilding in a redundant raid array?

Well, I've done a lot more work... back to running 4gb memory, new video card installed and working, every windows update is installed, every hardware driver installed, MCE is fully functional, about 75% of my apps are installed, and the system is 100% rock solid. Not a single issue in over 3 hours of intensive use, compared to crashing even while loading the emergency console!

I think important but not crucial parts of the registry had become corrupt on the old installation, and uninstalling the video card made things worse.

I notice that some minor things that had been a bit quirky on my system since day one aren't there any more... for instance if I was viewing a folder on the hard drive and used the Favorites menu to select a site, it would open up two IE7 windows. Doesn't do that now.

There's a few other quirks I had that I'll check out as well...

Whelp, so far so good - not a single problem since reinstalling from scratch. About 95% of my stuff is installed and going (I have a *ton* of software I need).

This actually IS already on a RAID - four drives with RAID 10 for the system drive and RAID 0 for video editing. Alas the redundancy didn't improve a software-generated problem. :-(

Sorry to hear that Daniel... Of all people too!


Computer stuff scares me to death. One of my Mac's at home is all screwed up after a breaker blew in the room it is in.

I'm not going to touch it though! I'll have to haul it in for repair I guess.

He's not the only one.

Finally getting somewhere near back to normal. The daughter's now banned - I'm getting here a laptop she can mess up to her heart's content.

What on earth did she do?

That never really works. You will be spending all your free time reinstalling XP on her machine. I finally showed my son how to reload XP so I don't get bothered quite so often.

rule#1 all PCs have an admin account and I am the only one that knows the PW. All other accounts are just limited user accounts. I do that with friends and family that I help with their PCs. It is amazing how many crap situations issues it helps avoid

She'll learn.

Would you Adam and Eve it. 9 months after getting her laptop (no problems at all) the daughter briefly uses our machine to check a pile of Sainsbury's "Active Kids" vouchers (see if we've won £50 of free shopping) and the monitor packs up. She's cursed I tell you, cursed.

Welcome to Windows! Would you like fries with that?

I feel your pain.

Years ago I used to have a problem - whenever my father walked up to me on a computer, it would crash.

Just to update everyone. I lashed up the spare monitor on Sunday and on Monday that one packed up too . . . *&%^~£@ Viewsonic. Then on Monday evening Freya decided to develop an infection (bad tooth) so, much as I love everyone here, I'm afraid the doggies take priority. I'm hoping to get down to PC World tomorrow so with a bit of luck I'll be up and running by Friday evening.

PS
I'm doing this from work (something I've had my knuckles rapped for in the past) so it's TTFN.