In The Trenches: Reviving the Dead Windows 2000 Professional

Thomas Shinder

My primary workstation is a K7-500 with 512 MB of
RAM on a FIC SD-11 motherboard. It was one of the earliest of the K7 generation
systems, and the speediest kid on the block when I got it. However, from the first day I installed Windows 2000 on this machine (when Windows 2000 was still
in beta), I’ve had to endure blue screens several times a week.

cMy primary workstation is a K7-500 with 512 MB of RAM on a FIC SD-11 motherboard. It was one of the earliest of the K7 generation systems, and the speediest kid on the block when I got it. However, from the first day I installed Windows 2000 on this machine (when Windows 2000 was still in beta), I’ve had to endure blue screens several times a week.

What is causing these blue screens? Who knows.
This machine has had dead and dying disk drives, whacked out cheapo RAM, USB
hard disks, USB CD-Writers with buggier than heck Adaptec drivers, and a host of
shareware, freeware and maulware that’s impossible to count. 

The blue screen
messages are always different, so I don’t feel like a victim of monotony. Like
they’ve usually been with Windows NT, they are absolutely worthless in
troubleshooting the problem. However, they are somewhat friendlier than NT’s
BSODs because they tell you that it might be related to software or hardware.
Armed that that information, how can you go wrong?

Living With A Dysfunctional Partner

Needless to say, I should get a new computer, or
run Windows 98 on it (at least then the Blue Screens would be considered
normal). But the
relationship I have with the machine is like that of a woman in a dysfunctional
relationship with a drunk. When he’s not drunk, he’s really nice. But you
never know when he’s going to come home drunk and beat you up. I never know
when this computer is going to come home drunk and beat me up.

One morning I got up early to start a new
project and he seemed fine. Didn’t try to BSOD on me or anything. After about
working for an hour, I noticed the sound disappeared. I continued working
because sound wasn’t an important aspect of the current project. About an hour
after that I restarted the computer to get the sound back. That’s when the fun
began.