cww.blog!

Well, Windows XP installed fine. But, I'm still having problems handling large amounts of data in short periods of time. For example, I can't extract service pack 2 without it complaining about files (different every time) being corrupt. I also watched Internet Explorer crash after downloading 8.5MB of AVG anti-virus. And, just a couple minutes ago, I got a blue screen that complained about a fault in atikvmag.dll, which is probably part of my video card driver software. [Update: Since atikvmag.dll, I've seen blue screens for win32k.sys, IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL, and MEMORY_MANAGEMENT. All in about the past 20 minutes. This is totally a motherboard problem.]

Let's pretend the problem isn't with my video card or my hard drive. That leaves the RAM, the processor and the motherboard. The processor is least likely to have a fault in it, since any fault there is likely to be Really Bad, not just Intermittently Bad, as my problems now are. So, that leaves me with the motherboard and the RAM. I don't think it's the RAM for the same reason I don't think it's the processor, but I guess the RAM is more likely to fail than the processor.

The motherboard, then. OK, so I need to take this thing back to Fry's and hope they have a non-idiot person working at customer service and another unopened Abit AN8 in stock. Chances? Based on my experience at Fry's, probably around 1%.

I once had a collection of nonfunctional hardware that I Just Didn't Want to take back there.

I wish there was a better solution to buying hardware locally than Fry's. Sigh.