a new test

well... i have a new test of my a+ certified computer technician abilities. yes, i passed the official tests necessary to get certified, but now i have a real computer problem to fix. a computer that doesn’t work, that has strange errors, and crashes pretty regularly, for no apparent reason, when i’m in the middle of something. there, i gave it away. yeah, it’s my computer. my computer is broken. and, if i am anywhere near as good at fixing computers as i claim to be and as my a+ certification ought to indicate, i sure as hell ought to be able to fix my own damn computer when it has a problem like this. so, i gotta fix my computer. now, the most recent time it crashed, i actually got an error message, unlike before. it said “bad_pool_caller”. usually the error message at windows xp stop screens that i have seen is “irql_not_less_or_equal”. so this is something new, something i never saw before. now there are strange noises that come from the computer every time i turn it on or restart, a sort of clunking noise, which, from my studies, probably indicates that the hard drive is fucked up and might suddenly stop working at any time. so, i should back up all my data. and my research online seems to indicate this particular bad_pool_caller error is often associated with bad memory, but it could also be caused by bad drivers or bad hardware. for the time being, i am re-enabling the error reporting service and automatic rebooting so that the next time an error like this occurs, it automatically reboots and then sends all the information to microsoft. that will allow me to see if they know what the problem is. now maybe this is something serious, and maybe i don’t have that much time, and maybe the hard drive is about to crap out for good... but i really don’t want to have to deal with this stupid problem, i have other shit to worry about. i suppose besides that i should probably get this program called memtest86 and use it in dos mode to test all of my computer’s memory. finally my dual-boot setup between dos and windows xp will be useful! that’s right, i have a dual-boot setup between ms-dos 7.10 and windows xp professional, using the windows nt boot menu system that comes with xp. the dos boot sector is in... get this... a file called bootsect.dos. wow. how original. plus i have other important files for dos, like io.sys, msdos.sys, command.com, etc. and i have the nt boot files like ntldr, ntdetect.com, and boot.ini. so, i have 2 operating systems... on a single hard drive partition! they said that it can’t be done, but i did it. a single fat32 partition, 80 gigabytes, supports both windows xp professional and ms-dos 7.10. of course i couldn’t format it using my bootable windows xp installation cd... it can only format a drive fat32 if the drive is 32 gigabytes or less. for larger drives... you have to format from dos. there is no other way, unless you have some fancy-ass expensive utility like partition magic or paragon partition manager. or i suppose you could probably do it for free from linux, but that is a crazy idea, because i don’t know linux, i know dos, and i can do it from dos, easy. so, that’s how i formatted the drive, from dos. i actually used free fdisk 1.3.0 beta to format it, back in december. you can find it on the internet, if you are an expert at finding stuff on the internet. free fdisk 1.3.0 beta is awesome. well actually, i just used that to partition it as fat32, technically. to format it, i actually used microsoft’s format.com utility from ms-dos 7.10. and of course the ms-dos 7.10 i refer to comes as a part of windows 98 second edition. it comes with a few earlier versions of windows, like windows 95 oem service release 2, and windows 98 original release, but windows 98 second edition has the best versions of all the files. now the ms-dos 7.10 i use is actually not entirely the one from windows 98 second edition, because it has many files replaced with alternative ones from other sources (in dos most commands are .exe or .com files, so if you know how to search the internet like a pro you can find the best ones for each command). on richmcgrew.com you can find a disk i made that has the special custom bastardized version of ms-dos 7.10 that has most of the files replaced with alternative ones from other sources, and it is based on the custom bastardized version of ms-dos 7.10 made by wengier and roy at the china dos union. basically they took several files from ms-dos 7.10 that comes with windows 98 second edition, and they somehow edited out all of the stuff that was unnecessary, and made the files as small as possible. so there are smaller versions of io.sys, command.com, and himem.sys, for example. they also did it for a bunch of other less important files too but those are the three most important ones they screwed around with. their bastardized, slimmed down versions of the files are much better than the originals, especially if you want to be running dos programs and have a lot of conventional memory free, or if you want to make a boot disk and save space by using small files. anyway, i kinda got off on a tangent there, but my point is, i am dual-booting between wengier and roy’s slimmed down version of ms-dos 7.10, and microsoft windows xp professional with service pack 2, and they are both on the same 80 gigabyte fat32 drive. the point of all this is, if windows crashes and stops working, i know i can count on dos as a backup, and be able to back up all my files safely from dos. it is basically convenience for someone like me who has a mystical appreciation for things like dos that are so retro and out of fashion that they only seem cool to someone as insane as me. and that is why my hard drive is fat32, because the default for windows xp, ntfs, is quite a bitch to get working under dos. there are ways to get ntfs working under dos, yes, but they are quite a chore, and a lot more iffy than fat32. 2 such utilities are sysinternals/winternals ntfsdos and datapol ntfs4dos. i wouldn’t trust either of them on a bet. the ntfs filesystem is very complicated and its details are kept hidden by microsoft so other software developers can’t take advantage of it, and it is really just a big complicated proprietary mess, and in case anything goes wrong, the only people who have a clue would be microsoft. fat32 on the other hand is very simple and straightforward and a lot easier for software developers to write software to directly interface with. it doesn’t have the bloat or secrecy of ntfs streams, file permissions, compression, encryption, or raid array support, which are all “features” of ntfs. but it’s funny... with some things, the more features it has, the less you trust it. and none of those features are things i would ever need or have any interest in, so for me, the simplicity of fat32 is superior in every respect. microsoft can crow about how ntfs is superior all they want, but if my computer ever has serious problems and windows stops working, i want a system that will at least let me have full read-write access from dos without any major headaches. so for the time being, i will just wait for this problem to happen again, and see if it happens differently the next time. i know that is a foolish approach, but i would like to observe the incubation period of this particular problem a bit longer so i can see exactly what i am dealing with. otherwise, it would be difficult for me to learn much experimentally. another thing i have suspicion about is the motherboard (besides the memory and the hard disk). the motherboard is a very suspicious component because it is actually a whole lot of moderately suspicious components all integrated together onto one giant circuit board. if just one of them goes wrong, the whole thing can be fucked up. so just based on size and complexity alone, the motherboard beats out any add-on card, except perhaps a video card. video cards are another sort of suspicious entity that you have to beware of, because they process a lot more data than other add-on cards, and are absolutely vital since they are in use all the time; modern video cards generate a lot of heat and often they actually need fans to keep cool, which means there is plenty of likelihood of failure. another thing that can really fuck a computer up is stuff you connect to it, like a big giant monitor or a huge subwoofer for a surround sound system. those types of things can zap the hell out of computers with big surges of electricity when you turn them on, because sometimes monitors or big subwoofer boxes have a lot of electricity inside them just waiting to attack any computer they get connected to. subwoofers also sometimes burn themselves out, creating some smoke and a burning smell, but usually there aren’t any flames... that happened to me once. the subwoofer i have now is the same model as the one that went up in smoke. and my parents’ computer has an evil monitor. mainly the monitor is evil because it is old, but it also zapped the hell out of this one video card, a trident pci card that had 8 megabytes of video ram. ever since that infamous zapping, that monitor has behaved itself, and the zapping incident was understandable, because the monitor had been sitting outside in the sun on a hot summer day, and then brought inside and hooked up to a computer. i am not exactly sure of the electrodynamics of it, but somehow, sitting in the hot sun and then being brought into an air-conditioned house does certain things to a monitor that make it just want to zap the hell out of whatever you hook it up to. electricity doesn’t really make much sense to me, actually... i never studied electrical engineering and i don’t know much physics. my college education in computers was all about software, and practically ignored hardware. the class for a+ certification and the books on it have covered a few basics about electricity, but it still seems like something too complicated for me to grasp fully; i am aware that many phenomena exist that are beyond my understanding, given my lack of education in this topic. so when one of these phenomena occurs, such as the monitor zapping a video card, it baffles me as to why that would happen. the photoelectric effect? an endothermic reaction? the earth’s magnetic field? electromagnetic induction? who the fuck knows? all i know is, electricity is pretty fucking complicated, and although we all take it for granted, most of us have no idea how it works, the resistors and capacitors and transistors and diodes and transformers and ac-dc and voltage and power and current. or how about a motor or a generator or an electromagnet or a light bulb. did you know that light and electromagnetic radiation are synonyms? why the fuck is that true? i have no clue. i don’t see any connection between light, electricity, and magnets. and what is the electromagnetic force, and why are there exactly 4 forces (gravity, electromagnetic, strong, and weak)? none of this shit makes any sense. so anyway, i am going to try and figure out what is going on here, despite the fact that i don’t understand electricity. what i do know is, too much electricity will fry a circuit and it will burn and there will be smoke and it will smell bad. but is that too much current, or voltage, or power, or what? i just say too much electricity. then at least i have everything covered. zappy zap zap zap zap. and if a spark is a form of electricity (static?) then why is a gun not considered an electric circuit? the gun sets off a spark to explode the gunpowder, producing a gaseous explosion that sends the bullet out of the chamber at high speed. isn’t the spark a form of electricity, and therefore a circuit? i know when people talk about lightning rods going into the ground they talk about completing the circuit, and a spark is the same thing as lightning except smaller (less big!). but in either case it can start fire. so why is light electromagnetic radiation, instead of fire, or sound, or heat, or something? seems kind of arbitrary to me, but i know there is some deeper sort of connection between light, electricity, and magnets that somehow justifies it. i just don’t know what that connection is, because my understanding of these concepts is about the same level as an unfrozen caveman from 10,000 years ago (fire bad! big light shoot from sky, make loud noise, start fire! what is machine? how it work? me not know.). i hope i can still fix computers. i should probably study this stuff.