I just started writing a post about Aika Zero and wanted to get some dialog from the third episode, so I started watching it. Then the screen went weird, and Win 7 went down.

When I try to restart it, even the BIOS-level screen has strangely colored checkerboard patterns all over it. When it goes into the high-res Win 7 boot screen, there's a regular pattern of vertical lines. I think the graphics just went bogus. And it failed three times to reboot. I'm letting it cool, but I think it's in deep trouble.

I'm using Arcturus, the old Compaq, to post this. Procyon, my ASUS machine which seems now to be dead, has an nVidia 8600M GT graphics chip, and those had a production problem leading to a high mortality rate when lines desoldered themselves. Unfortunately, after two and a half years I'm no longer covered by warranty. If, after it cools, it still fails then it's going to the doctor tomorrow.

Until it gets fixed, however, my activity around here may be limited. The Compaq screen is tiny, and the computer is slow, and I don't have most of my apps installed on it.

UPDATE: Nope, it's still the same after it cooled. Going to the doctor tomorrow. I wonder if the graphics chip is on a separate board, or does this require a mobo replacement? Whatever it is, it ain't gonna be cheap.

I was recently musing about getting a new one; maybe I should get more serious about that. The problem is that the only entry in this model that NewEgg carries has a gawdawful red case and I don't want to spend my time looking at that. (Who in hell would want a red computer?)

UPDATE: Well, now they've got a version of it which isn't red. The only thing in the spec sheet I don't like is that the display is smaller than the one I've got now. It's 1920*1080 instead of 1920*1200.

UPDATE: Looks like no one uses 1920*1200 displays. Probably that was a non-standard size. The LCD companies look to have standardized on 1920*1080 for TVs because that's BD resolution.

I think I'll take this opportunity to let everyone know that until this gets resolved, I won't be able to receive email. It'll just stack up on Comcast's server.

UPDATE: This would be a whole lot more of a nightmare if I didn't have Deneb, the Windows home server. But I do.

As I was web-browsing using Arcturus, I realized a lot of my regular web sites looked wrong. I've been creating special rules in Proxomitron for some of them to do things like change fonts. So I just now dug into Deneb's archive of backups for Procyon and retrieved the most recent Proxomitron configuration files. And now everything looks fine.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Vista at 05:49 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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