Deadly, especially if you're busily working on something and haven't had a chance to save (like this blog). One minute you're happily typing away, and an instant later you're staring at this eye blinding blue screen with white text that says Windows has died...again.
Until having my new hard drive installed, I'd never heard of a BSoD. Apparently, I'm not alone in my suffering. Pages and pages of Google revealed to me the problem my computer suffers from:
Since the only fix for this malady is to buy a Mac, I could only nod and smile and wish I had the money. More digging uncovered other information I really didn't understand. A bunch of long numbers with letters mixed in. I really don't get why computer messages can't flash a screen that says: Hey, dumbass! Your NIC card is F#@$ed up! Fix it!
But no. Instead we get things like, "DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL", which is followed by a code (or five--thousand) that looks like some sort of code from the spy era of the Cold War. "Yeah, Jim. We got a ZERO DELTA NINER ZERO ZERO ZERO ZERO ZERO ZERO ZERO ZERO X ZERO ZERO ZERO ZERO ZERO ZERO ZERO ZEROTHECHAIRISAGAINSTTHEWALL NINER X."
Obviously, the President wants a cup of coffee. God forbid he ask for a latte.
I digress. Microsoft, of course, offers their help with these STOP codes and their harbinger of doom, the BSoD. See, look at how helpful they are: their answer to my problem
Thanks Microsoft!
Sadly, my error wasn't special enough to warrant giving up the bad driver name in my BSoD message. At none that I could read. Which is fine and good, I suppose, because there probably isn't much I can do about it anyway. I have a sneaking suspicion that my computer's trouble stems from the new hard drive. Tomorrow I'll call the people who fixed it, laugh about it, then get mad when they try to charge me another 70 bucks to fix it. Part of me thinks the BSoD and I can learn to live with each other, sort of like Lucy and Ricky.
In closing, I leave you with my system error code:
Error code 100000d1, parameter1 f8009c60, parameter2 00000002, parameter3 00000000, parameter4 f7fb4a80.
Happy Holidays everyone!
Posted by Zoso at December 26, 2006 12:46 AMSo, you totally need to get a few comp science, programing, and software development degrees if you truly intend to keep using Windows PCs. It appears that you and computers don't get along. How much do you spend on the Geek Squad annually?
Seriously though, what's wrong with error messages in English? Is MS simply trying to support the computer repair industry by popping up crazy, illegible messages of doom? They've got a long way yet to go before their products are average consumer-centric. Hopfully Vista stikes a little closer to the bullseye than even XP did.
Posted by: J at December 26, 2006 01:36 AMLol. Too bad Microsoft doesn't say what the error is in plain english. Then, perhaps, us John Does could fix it. If the error message actually said "Get a new hard drive" or "Get your hand off of the damn shift button" I would be able to understand. Instead, it gives you an extremely long code or it just beeps at your ass. As if I know what "Bleep" means. Stupid sticky keys thing... I swear that some of these errors just happen spontaneously. I've had a driver just shut off. It just shut itself off. Thank goodness I found a good computer guy, who doesn't charge for little things. It didn't even take him five minutes to fix it. Now if the error message would have said something productive like "Turn the damn driver back on" and provided step by step instructions, it would have saved me a trip to the computer guy, and I would have been spared his half-smile that basically says "It wasn't difficult to fix, you're and idiot."
Posted by: Mia at December 27, 2006 05:45 PM