New Year and Trouble

Well, I haven’t posted in a while. I also haven’t been able to do very much. My world is pretty much in disarray again. Just when I thought I had made peace with my “family life” (or what is left of it), my mom and I get disappointed again. Bravo. The man that fathered me is the most egotistical pig I have ever met. I feel ashamed just to be related to him.

I feel like I’ve been set back over half a year. I’ll try to use what I’ve learned during my therapy, but I’m not sure that is enough. I think I may need some guidance again, but right now I don’t even know what I feel. I’m just worried that the last semester will repeat itself. I can’t really afford that.

I’ve also had major problems with my main computer. It won’t boot. Or more correctly, it will boot all the way just past the Windows login prompt, and then 9 out of 10 times it will just do an “instant reset”, all the way to the POST again. There’s no bluescreen, no error beeps, no error messages, and no entries in the event log. The weirdest thing, though, is that if the computer stays alive for a few more seconds, then my computer is pretty stable. I just can’t figure this one out.

At first I thought it was a faulty hard drive because for a while, my computer wouldn’t boot at all, so I rush-ordered a new hard drive so I could fix everything before Diana and I went to Kansas City over New Year’s. I got the new drive installed, but that didn’t get rid of the “instant reset” problem. I’ve got a feeling that it’s actually getting worse.

I’ve unplugged some unnecessary components, but that didn’t help. I’ve measured the temperatures of CPU, motherboard, RAM, graphics card, and drives, and everything seems to be within range. I ran an extensive RAM test, so I don’t think that’s it. It could still be a faulty motherboard, graphics card, or power supply.

There’s really only more thing I can try: Hook up another power supply, even though that’s a major hassle. I can’t really go to a store and say “Give me a motherboard and a graphics card, I just wanna see if they fix the problem, if not, I’ll return them!” I don’t have the right kind of graphics card, RAM or motherboards on hand, and I can’t randomly buy something and hope that it will work. I have neither the money for that nor the time. If the power supply doesn’t do the trick, I’ll have to buy a new computer…

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About Mathias

Software development engineer. Principal developer of DrJava. Recent Ph.D. graduate from the Department of Computer Science at Rice University.
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