The Blue Screen of Death

...but I'm still here, Schlecklanders!

I've been having computer problems: picked up a problem somewhere over the last couple of weeks (probably from one of the Addictive Games that I'm not allowed to play anymore - boo!)  which lead me to the Blue Screen of Death, with increasing frequency.

I'm sure that most of you have encountered the Blue Screen of Death: what's that? You haven't? Where have you been? Or, do you buy a new computer every two years, then? Well, for anyone lucky enough to not know about them, they look a bit like this:

Blue, clearly, and full with incomprehensible jargon telling you why - in secret code - your computer has crashed. If it happens more than once in a while, you have a problem with your computer.

Mine appeared one day - ooer, I thought, Blue Screen of Death, that's a first for this computer. It said something about drivers being the problem, and that whatever I had recently downloaded was causing the computer to crash.

"Odd," I thought, "I haven't downloaded anything at all?"

 Then a couple of days later it appeared again -  I read it carefully, made notes of the ludicrously complicated error codes, looked them up on Google, looked them up again as nothing made any sense at all, then tried to do exactly what was recommended.

Then a day or so later, it was appearing within ten or fifteen minutes of me switching the pc on. Having done everything that had been recommended - scanned computer, updated everything possible, checked my Event Viewer to see if there were any nasty red ones - I couldn't do anything except that old standby: turn it off, let it sit for a minute or two, then reboot.

Clearly, there was a problem!

And then - scary sound effect of Hammer House of Horror organ chords - I got the Black Screen of Death! That one doesn't have any instructions or suggestions on it - the screen just goes black and that's it.

Ooer. What now? I turned it all off, waited, turned it on again and got the plain black screen but - oh noes! - with the Beeps of Doom from the PC. That was it folks: blank black screen, and Beeps of Doom emanating from ankle-level. I tried getting into BIOS, I tried a Safe Start, but it kept crashing with the Black Screen of Death, and if I tried to turn it on in less than 10 minutes, the Beeps of Doom.

So, long story made short, I have been computer-less for a while, until LLB came round and fixed it for me. Well, I say "fixed it", actually we don't know what was wrong with it: he did a full diagnostic, which incidentally revealed that my spindle is partially inoperative (picture LLB and I rolling our eyes at each other - the CD/DVD reader works perfectly, so we don't actually believe that that is a problem) and he did push all the memory cards fully in... I have no idea how anything inside the PC could work its way loose, but there you go... and it all seems to work ok. LLB says that he hasn't actually fixed anything - but it works, so he's getting the credit for it! We then did a System Restore to about 6 weeks ago, and all seems to be well so far.

So, how have you all been?

Andy's been very quiet - no activity in any of my cupboards or wardrobes, so I guess they are all training and racing quite happily. SaxoBank are still waiting for the axe to fall: Mad Bad Dave Zabriskie looked as though he was going to be the superstar of the Tour of SomeShitSmallRace, but sadly he fell ill and came in last yesterday - ahh, it's nice to be able to catch up on these things again, even if I have never heard of the race and actually have no idea where in the world it occurs.

This weekend we have Strada Bianche on the Saturday, and on Sunday we start Paris-Nice, yay! with a good strong team as well, so fingers crossed for some TV coverage in the UK. Both Andy and Frankie will be racing there, and Jensi will be keeping them in line. Should be good! Pity we can't have Fabu and Jakob there as well, but Fabian is doing Strada Bianche, and Jakob will be trying to keep the youngsters in line (ha! ha!) in the catchily-named Three Days of West Flanders.

Right, that's explanation and apology done: now let's get some more interesting blog entries composed! Perhaps I should do a couple now, while everything is working, and set them up in advance?  If anyone has any suggestions as to what I should write about, do feel free to contact me via email at cougar-girl@hotmail.co.uk, or by adding a comment below!