Warning: techie computer talk contained herein; if you are a non-techie type, feel free to skip it, since in the end, it’s just grousing anyway!

Hello, my name is Nadine, and I’m a Computer Killer. I don’t know what I do to these things, but I think I’ve been through three CPU’s in about four years. It’s become the family joke, at this point. The last one (actually a rebuild of the one before with a new motherboard, so it counts as a new one) lasted only 11 months, which is pretty scary. So here’s the recap: I got up Saturday morning planning to get in some serious quilting time, and I checked email and a few other things on the ‘Net as usual. Then I get a window that pops up and says that iTunes, QuickTime and Safari want to update, so I let it do it’s thing, and then restart. And then…nothing. Upon restart, the whole thing is stuck at the Bios screen. Can’t press F1, F8, Esc, nothing. I tried twice more to start it up, and got the same thing. The third time (after unplugging from the power, discharging residual power and plugging back in), I get something like this:

The overclocking or overvoltage has failed. Press F1 to enter Setup and change your configuration settings or F2 to continue.

Neither F1 nor F2 got me anywhere no matter how many times I pressed, so it was still stuck. I looked up this error on the Internet using the MacBook, and found something that indicated that it might be the Bios chip, or maybe it needed a Bios upgrade. Well, I had this Bios chip already here that the motherboard manufacturer sent the last time it all did something weird, but I’d never put it in (by the time it arrived in the mail, the weirdness was gone, so why fix it?). I decided to see if it would fix it now, since I’d definitely never seen this particular problem before, and at that point, I’d nothing to lose.

No joy though; putting the new Bios chip in got me exactly nowhere. It didn’t even get to the Bios screen then, it just sat there with a blank screen. The lights were on, but nobody was home. I put the original Bios chip back in, and it didn’t even do what it was doing before the switch, just gave me the black screen. ITMan had no sage advice, except to get in the car and go buy another at the PX. Sounds simple, right? No, not really, Read the rest of this entry »

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I haven’t dropped off the earth, I’ve just been busy being TaxiMom instead of QuiltingMom for the kids, and programming against deadlines for clients. I will be back, I promise…I have to quilt soon, since I’m starting to have withdrawals… Oh, and I had to order more rayon thread, again! sigh

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