It's just been too long friends! To catch up on what's been happening of late. In the beginning, was a fine cost effective demo computer, small and compact,perfect for traveling. Then, One day I had this error in bootup that I was missing a nfts.sys file. I tried to reboot, same problem. On the fourth try, it booted just fine. I worked on it for several hours, and got the blue screen of death.
When I tried to reboot, same problem with that missing file. Well, after doing this off and on for several days, it seemed like a hardware problem. If that file were actually missing, it wouldn't boot normally at all. So I had a crazy thought, lets call the 'warranty' people that i used to insure it from officemax , and they wouldn't touch it of course. Plus the logistical problem of getting it there and back in a reasonable amount of time was impossible. So I decided (with the help of our company IT guy) to just wipe the hard drive. Even though the computer was only working off and on, i was able to get a full back!PTL. I bought my computer as a demo ( i only paid 450 bucks for it) and it didn't come with any system disks (like xp or any installed software), but I had a valid xp key on the little stickerdude on my back of my computer, so i didn't think much about it. My IT friend wipes my hard drive and before he puts it back in, we just try to turn on the computer without the harddrive, guess what-we still get the error! ARGGGG. so it wasn't actually the hard drive at all, it was the RAM!
I didn't even think to check it. My IT had an extra stick laying around, popped it in and booted just fine. Apparently my computer got too warm and caused some corruption in the RAM. Then I realized, that the power supply I am using, isn't the orginial-it came with an HP power supply from officemax for some reason, but they said the averatec works fine with this power supply. After my ram burned out, i looked a little closer and the HP powersupply is a 95 Watts but the one that is suppose to go with it is only 65 Watts, I don't know if this contributes to the overheating or not, but it is definitely overcharging my battery! (So I purchased a new power supply and it will hopefully be here late this month)Anyway,So then, i get the windows xp cd from my buddy, and start to install since there is nothing on my hard drive now, but it wouldn't accept my key on the back of my computer as valid xp key! Then I remembered an event that happened in 2005 and I had to call microsoft and get another key for some reason-xp just one day decided that the key in it was invalid, but they gave me another key-but I didn't write it down, Doh!! I'm so stupid, so now Microsoft won't give me another key and since its outside averatec's one year warranty, i'm stuck....legally. ...but there are ways around that of course *wink wink* I am running xp now. But my processor is still getting warmer than usually, around 145 degrees! that's hot. So recently its been shutting down suddenly to prevent overheating. While all this was going on, I also noticed that the casing around the hinges for my laptop were coming apart and the screen had alot of play in it. So I used Gorilla glue to keep the casing together. It worked pretty good.
I hope to save up and maybe get a new computer by the end of the year, if this one lasts that long as jacked up as it is.
When I tried to reboot, same problem with that missing file. Well, after doing this off and on for several days, it seemed like a hardware problem. If that file were actually missing, it wouldn't boot normally at all. So I had a crazy thought, lets call the 'warranty' people that i used to insure it from officemax , and they wouldn't touch it of course. Plus the logistical problem of getting it there and back in a reasonable amount of time was impossible. So I decided (with the help of our company IT guy) to just wipe the hard drive. Even though the computer was only working off and on, i was able to get a full back!PTL. I bought my computer as a demo ( i only paid 450 bucks for it) and it didn't come with any system disks (like xp or any installed software), but I had a valid xp key on the little stickerdude on my back of my computer, so i didn't think much about it. My IT friend wipes my hard drive and before he puts it back in, we just try to turn on the computer without the harddrive, guess what-we still get the error! ARGGGG. so it wasn't actually the hard drive at all, it was the RAM! 
I didn't even think to check it. My IT had an extra stick laying around, popped it in and booted just fine. Apparently my computer got too warm and caused some corruption in the RAM. Then I realized, that the power supply I am using, isn't the orginial-it came with an HP power supply from officemax for some reason, but they said the averatec works fine with this power supply. After my ram burned out, i looked a little closer and the HP powersupply is a 95 Watts but the one that is suppose to go with it is only 65 Watts, I don't know if this contributes to the overheating or not, but it is definitely overcharging my battery! (So I purchased a new power supply and it will hopefully be here late this month)Anyway,So then, i get the windows xp cd from my buddy, and start to install since there is nothing on my hard drive now, but it wouldn't accept my key on the back of my computer as valid xp key! Then I remembered an event that happened in 2005 and I had to call microsoft and get another key for some reason-xp just one day decided that the key in it was invalid, but they gave me another key-but I didn't write it down, Doh!! I'm so stupid, so now Microsoft won't give me another key and since its outside averatec's one year warranty, i'm stuck....legally. ...but there are ways around that of course *wink wink* I am running xp now. But my processor is still getting warmer than usually, around 145 degrees! that's hot. So recently its been shutting down suddenly to prevent overheating. While all this was going on, I also noticed that the casing around the hinges for my laptop were coming apart and the screen had alot of play in it. So I used Gorilla glue to keep the casing together. It worked pretty good. 
I hope to save up and maybe get a new computer by the end of the year, if this one lasts that long as jacked up as it is.
8 comments:
Scot,
I had many similar problems while in B'dad with the office computers. The best thing I found to do was to search on google and other places for that particular error message. You can usually find a site that can give you good instruction as to what the actual failure was and how to fix it if you look hard enough. They're usually not terribly _fun_ fixes (we had the wrong processor on several motherboards), but it might save you time and aggravation.
Of course, all of that is assuming that you have access to another computer. :)
Hope you're well! Check my blog for some exciting news!
Wow. A post. Wierd.
How do you measure the temperature of your hard drive?
Nice new format by the way.
Wanna check your harddrive temp? You can download this app.
check out http://www.almico.com/speedfan
I'm 58 degrees.
Oh- forgot to say.
Carmen Scotiago, We Love You!
Want your old computer back, Scot? It could work if you do cause I'll be in Germany when you will be, I think . . . your photo illustrations make me smile. Lauri
You need an audio clip of "Where in the World is Carmen Scotiago" on your blog, sung by Rockapella.
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