My computer had been giving me issues for a long time. It would crash and show me some goofy blue screen, indicating that some driver had caused the system to crash. Usually there was some weird thing like IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL, too. I figured it was a motherboard/processor issue, but I didn’t want to spend the money to replace the thing becuase I don’t have a lot of money to spare. On monday or so of this week, the computer died on me so I had to get the replacment parts. I went with a Gigabyte motherboard and an AMD 64 3500 + Processor.
I’d never replaced a motherboard or processor before, but I figured it couldn’t be that hard to do. I took everything out of the computer, got the new parts in just fine, and turned it on. It worked – except that it wouldn’t load windows. I figured I might as well just wipe the whole thing, since the last time I’d done so was in May. I watched some ‘Band of Brothers’ while I waited for windows to install and updates to download. Luckily I was able to back up all of my information onto my Ipod, which made saving/restoring data real simple like.
I haven’t had the computer crash on me yet, which is always a good thing. I plan to burn the new processor in today by making some fractals in python. 