First I had the BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH!!!, which I only had when my extra GB of RAM was installed.

Now it’s developed a NEW problem.

It’ll get hot, then hotter, then hotter again, then…it’ll turn off. That’s it. No restarting or anything, it just dies.

Damn you, Dave the Laptop.

I don’t know why but I reinstalled my RAM on Saturday.
It worked fine until last night; the laptop just randomly turned itself off. I thought it might be overheating, so I left it for about twenty minutes, until the casing had cooled down.

I turned it back on. An hour later, it turned itself off again after getting another bloody blue screen.

So I uninstalled the RAM again, turned the laptop back on and…no internet. I restarted the laptop, unplugged the router, then plugged it back in and unplugged and plugged the internet box.
Nope; the laptop had decided that it wasn’t going to connect to the internet.

So I went to bed.

Got up, woke up, turned the laptop back on and plugged back into the internet and this time it would connect.
Great, now my laptop thinks it’s a bloody teenager.

I got sick of the (lack of) speed, so installed the RAM again. Blue screen, bleating on about memory. Uninstall the RAM, look up “paging files” – maybe too much memory is being given to the paging file?
So I did my maths and according to the site I found, the minimum should be the size of the RAM installed (1280MB) and the maximum should be 1.5 times the size of the RAM (1920MB). I did that, restartet and … blue screen.

Then I turned the air blue…

I’ve uninstalled the RAM again and I don’t think I’ll be reinstalling it again. I don’t seem to be having any problems without the extra RAM (…other than the slowness).
So I don’t think I’ll be up for making graphics or doing pretty much ANYTHING I normally do because my laptop can no longer handle it.

I got up on Tuesday and turned on my laptop. I was online for about ten minutes when I got a blue screen.

Crap! I waited a few seconds and then turned my laptop off.
Waited about a minute, turned the laptop back on. Started showing the desktop, the blue screen came back.

****!!

Dug out my manuals to find out which F button is the one to get the laptop into Safe Mode (since every bloody computer and laptop I’ve had has had a different F button).
It’s not in there but there are hints in the manuals that most information is on the documentation CD…which is no bloody use to me as I can’t get the bloody laptop to stay on!

I decide to start up the laptop and go through each F button every time it starts up. Got into Safe Mode eventually.

Started grabbing a few files I’d forgotten to back up previously and deleted all of the stuff I’d downloaded.
Blue screen, again. Great. Now what? Hmm…maybe it’s a worm? I didn’t think worms gave out blue screens but I don’t know much about worms at all…

So I started trying to reinstall the operating system. Got about halfway through before that bloody blue screen came back.
Wait – if reinstalling the O/S isn’t working, then it’s got to be a hardware problem.
Awesome. The only hardware experience I have is with installing new RAM and things like printers, keyboards and mice…*groan* – got to take my laptop over to the computer doctors.

I take it over to the computer doctors near me, they take it in overnight to try and see what’s wrong. They warn me that if it is a hardware issue, there’s nothing they can do.
Crap. Crap. Crap!

I phone them up the next day, asking if my laptop’s fixed and ready to come home. They say “Yes and no…”. They say that there seems to be something up with the graphics driver; the blue screen comes on unless they have the Windows default one.
I tell them I forgot to bring the Drivers & Apps disc with me when I brought in my laptop (although I remembered to bring in my O/S disc).
They ask me to bring it down with me when I come to pick up my laptop; they’ll install it for me and see if that fixes the problem.

I get down there, give them the drivers & apps disc and wait for a few minutes. The owner comes back and says that my laptop is now fixed and can be taken home. Yay!

I bring my laptop home and after finishing the book I’d been reading, turned my laptop on and began to reinstall all of my lost programmes.
I’d installed Flock and McAfee and was just installing CuteFTP when the blue screen came back.

Turned my laptop off, put it away. A few minutes later, pull the laptop back out and uninstall the extra GB of RAM I’d installed less than a year ago. Packed the laptop away again and sulked all night.

Pulled out my laptop today and promised it (yes, I talk to my laptop. Shut up!) that if it behaves and works without the extra RAM, I’ll save up another £85 to buy another GB of RAM for it!

Turned my laptop on today. Working fine. Finish installing CuteFTP and install Photoshop. Still working. Allowed McAfee to virus scan. Still working.

I’ve been online since about 2:25pm and my laptop is still working.

I guess I’d better start saving.