As I had written a few days ago, for some unknown reason my Vista crashed and refused to log me in. Upon subsequent installation, the same operating system started behaving funnily. It would restart by itself while watching a video long enough, hang when no program is active and what not. I had had enough and decided to switch to Ubuntu.
Now I was quite happy with my linux operating system and never wanted to use Vista again. Everything I needed was availale in Linux (Amarok, VLC and GEdit). Happy enough not to have logged into the Microsoft operating system this whole time.
But then, yesterday, I encountered a situation wherein I would have to make the switch. I have this test today and the notes are available digitally in the format of Windows’ help files. I did not know how to open it in linux, and not having the luxury of googling around (time crunch), I decided to restart the computer and enter Vista.
No sooner had I logged on, I met the same problem again. It just woulsn’t leave me. The screen kept going blank for a few seconds roughly every ten minutes. Computer would restart every half an hour. I should be worried as the hard disks suffer in such cases. But I had no other option. I needed to read this file which would open only in windows. So I let it be. Everytime the windows would restart, prompt for a submit problem dialog and then get no solution.
The luck shined after the 5th restart. This time, Vista came up with a solution. It identified the problem as one related to a hardware or a driver (as if I had not figured it out myself by now). It identified 4 possibly corrupt components – RAM, mother-board, processing unit, or the power system. Need I point that these make up the bulk of the system. I changed a few power settings to conserve power and let the performance suffer. I could do nothing about the rest.
A few minutes later the computer restarts. Oh, by the way, did I mention that apart from having this document open, I also had my vlc running. This was the sixth restart. Another restart, another prompt for online checking of solution. A routine, boring exercise it had become by then. But hey, this time I was presented a much better solution.
You have a corrupt Graphics Driver. Please try to update the driver – was what Vista came up with this time. And I immediately knew what had to be done. Device Manager -> Display Adapter -> Update driver … The screen flickered a few times, the resolution changed from 1280×1024 to 800×600 and back again. The screen defocussed and then came ack to focus and finally the update finished with the success message. The driver was updated.
And unbelievably, I haven’t had the restart or the blanking problems since then. My computer is now running for some 10 hours on Vista now without a restart. I think I have finally put an end to the problem. But lets not be so sure. I intend to go on for atleast a day, putting the system under intense computational supervision to convince myself that the problem is indeed solved. Wish me luck !
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