Fun With Samantha II

[MisterCat]

Samantha, otherwise known as Compaq Presario 5WV270 2H0BFPP9F1LC, suffered a near-death experience Saturday yet was brought back to life thanks to a maximum-effort attempt at saving her.

With the dreaded command "Reinstall the operating system!" looming over her central processing unit like a hangman's noose, Samantha at last responded to the day- and night-long treatments administered by MisterCat.  What happened was this:  A friend of mine brought me a monitor he no longer needed, as he knew Samantha's monitor had lapsed into a permanent condition of cross-talk.

Consequently, I hooked up the Radius PrecisionColor Display/17 to Samantha; and that was my big mistake.  Radius, I later discovered, had long since faded into history ââ,¬â€ the monitor in question having been manufactured in 1994.

But meanwhile, back at the ranch:  The cross-talk was gone but in its place was a 640x480 resolution, 16-color display.  I tried in every way I knew, which isn't saying much, to get the damned display to show 1024x768 resolution and at least 256 colors ââ,¬â€ to no avail.

Adding insult to injury is the fact one of my attempts to fix the problem was apparently one attempt too many:  Upon the ten-millionth re-start, give or take, I was greeted with a Blue Screen Of Death asserting a "protection fault" had occurred.

The next several hours were spent in an off-line frenzy, since Samantha would henceforth only operate in Safe Mode.  I took this opportunity to send the Radius monitor off the pitch; and back into the fray came Samantha's original monitor, a Compaq MV540.

Finally, perhaps due to divine intervention, Samantha managed to properly start in Normal Mode.  Immediately, I went to the Hewlett-Packard web site and downloaded the latest (compatible) graphics driver.

Yay, the color and resolution problems (but not the cross-talk) were solved; the "protection fault" screen retired to its ambush location and I happily returned the two Compaq QuickRestore compact disks to their ready room on the shelf!  There was even a silver lining to that cloud:  Whilst moving all this computing-system stuff around, I took the opportunity to thoroughly clean the area; and now I practically need to wear sunglasses when looking at Samantha's major components in addition to the work station itself.

:smoke:

=^..^=

[C-Chan]

I've since stopped using Compaq/HP since the last handful of times I've had trouble with their machines (computers and printers).  (makes me wonder if it's intentional.... -__-)

But let me see if I get this straight....

"Reinstall the operating system" popped up because of the monitor, or is that just something that preceded the whole debacle....? O_o

[MisterCat]

C-Chan, "reinstall the operating system" is one of the ugly thoughts which popped into my head after a number of corrective measures failed.  I had the disks out and ready, but decided to try a few more cunning plans before consigning all my files to the cosmos.

;026

One of the upshots of all this is that I've discarded some dead equipment (a keyboard, a mouse, a printer and a scanner) and have ordered a new keyboard:  It's a Memorex keyboard with a wrist rest, costing all of $12USD brand new (plus shipping).  The interim keyboard I'm now using works just fine except for the space bar, which needs to be clubbed by one's thumb to produce the desired space.

;013

Phase Two of the Grand Plan involves acquiring a new monitor, since the cross-talk problem is very annoying.  I've isolated that glitch to the monitor itself, so its days are numbered!

;019

=^..^=

[SleepyD]

My family's second desktop computer was an HP, with Secchan on it.
(Our first was a 3.1, I don't remember the hardware...)

The computer didn't like new hardware much... Well, that might have been my dad's and my own inexperience with computers...

In any case, I've since reinstalled 98SE on that computer, but now she's just... well, sitting there.  3 monitors, 4 towers, you see...  At least she works smoothly now. You know, I kinda wish that HP didn't make it so that 98 would only install on THAT HP Desktop.  I'd like to install it here... oh well.

Hope you don't run into any more random complications, misterCat!

[NewYinzer]

My family's second desktop computer was an HP, with Secchan on it.
(Our first was a 3.1, I don't remember the hardware...)

How ironic! My family's first computer was a 3.0, and then we had bought two other computers with 95 on them. My dad's was upgraded to 98SE, but now I have inherited it and call it Secchan. I still don't know what I'm gonna do with it...
*looks at clock*
Oh snap! 10:16 PM! See yinz tomorrow!