My computer died on me recently. Well, sort of.
It started a few weeks ago. Afi actually was first to notice my laptop PC turning off randomly and told me. It then started to turn off soon after booting up, just as Windows was loading, such that it took several attempts before I could get the computer up and running every morning. I was extremely annoying, to say the least, and most frustrating when the computer just suddenly shut down without warning, without even the BSOD, in the middle of work.
The problem could be hardware or software related. Honestly I really couldn’t tell either way, but I decided to treat it as a software issue because, as I told Afi, a software problem was something I could do something about. Whether that something was for the better or for the worse was something else altogether. There was nothing I could do if the problem was with hardware.
The timing fitted the now infamous Windows 8.1 Update (KB 2919355). If your PC runs on this latest Microsoft OS and you don’t know what it is, consider yourself lucky. It was a cumulative set of updates Microsoft said you must install by 13 May or your computer will explode. Unfortunately, to a lot of people the update created a whole lot of problems. After spending I-don’t-know-how-many hours scouring the web and doing things some of which I wasn’t sure I should be doing on the computer, I believed that I had isolated the problem to a component update (KB 2959977). However, Windows would not recognize that (KB 2919355) was installed unless it was installed in full, including (KB 2959977). One solution, I decided, was to clean reinstall Windows 8.1.
The university is a member of DreamSpark Premium (formerly MSDN Academic Alliance), which provides all staff and students free access to most of the latest Microsoft software. The university must be paying a lot of money for this, but surprisingly few staff and students actually know and take advantage of the service. Anyway, it provided me with a free, licensed copy of Windows 8.1 Professional.
When I wanted to install the new OS from a USB stick, I was struck by an old problem. My previous attempt to install Ubuntu on the laptop messed up the boot. The computer ran, so I simply forgot about it. So now the computer wouldn’t boot from USB, and as far as I could tell, not from CD as well. Undeterred, further tinkering left the computer unable to boot at all. I was doomed.
Finally, after spending a day dwelling on it, I picked up the phone and called Dell tech support.
I never called before, so had no idea that it was so difficult to get through. The first time I on hold for a full thirty minutes before I gave up. So I looked up the number of the company that actually does the servicing for Dell and called them instead. Apparently, they only accept referrals from Dell. Thankfully, the person who answered gave me another number to call at Dell, which finally connected me with a technical support specialist.
After I gave her a quick narration, the specialist asked me to run hardware diagnostics on the computer. Almost towards the end of the tests, my computer shut down. She asked me to feel the bottom of the laptop. It was hot. She said that it could be a faulty motherboard and/or heat sink, which needed to be replaced. That definitely explained the random shut down.
However, my warranty expired last December. I was given the option of either extending my warranty or ordering the specific parts. She recommended that opt for the warranty extension, which was cheaper and gave me another year’s protection. I went for it.
So last Wednesday a technician came and replaced my laptop’s motherboard and heat sink and restored its operating system—the original Windows 8. My computer is working again. Since then I have upgraded the OS, installed the few missing drivers. I have yet to reinstall all of the old software and reconfigure all of the old favorite settings. Thankfully, I was able to download and reinstall Office 2013 from my Microsoft account. The rest are all open-source/freeware.
This latest episode costed me two weeks. It taught me some valuable lessons, though not all may be learned, LOL. Perhaps I should stop messing with things I don’t fully understand with the computer, but where is the fun in the that, right?
