As well as being a professional cycle mechanic I have somehow also managed to attain status as a talented computer repairman. I’m not sure entirely how I gained this reputation but gain it I did, and because of it I have become something of an amateur expert. While far from professional I can usually ascertain what the problem is well enough to get help on forums, thus resolving the issue. So far I have found that when it comes to messing with your hardware, if you can get your PC to POST (or boot up) then any issues are driver issues 95% of the time. If it won’t POST, it’s your RAM that’s playing up. Nearly always. Of course sometimes when it will POST it’s your RAM too. I had an issue when I built a media PC and it wouldn’t install windows XP onto itself. Very sensible, but irritating when that was the most expensive individual part. Turns out this was because, to save money I used old RAM which was very nearly compatible with the motherboard, until it starts working with large files, then things go all blue-screen-of-death on you. New RAM and everything’s fixed.
For this reason when I received a phone call this afternoon from Sennet, who had somehow managed to cause his computer to cease working I suggested it may be a RAM problem.He had fitted a new DVD burner and when reconnecting everything all he got was fans noise No display, no beeps, just fans. Odd as usually your PC will give error beeps when it won’t post. Nonetheless I popped over after work with some spare DDR I had kicking about in the hopes that this would fix the problem. (The same RAM, incidentally, that nearly worked in my media PC!). I Confidently whipped out the old memory and slotted in the other old memory, plugged in, powered up and got the most disturbing retching noise a computer has ever made in my presence. Whoops. Put his memory back in and it worked straight away. So what the hell was wrong with it before!?
I have three theories, one is that somehow my cocking it up big style reset the BIOS to default and resolved a conflict there, that maybe I dislodged some dirt or something with my fiddling or thirdly that I have healing hands. That’s definitely it. I wreak miracles.
