Two weeks ago my work laptop decided to crash. It was not the first time something like this happened to me and i am quite prepared to it but this time the laptop shutdown around midnight just before the start of my work.
I got to the office on Monday night around 11 PM, I switched on my laptop and went to check that there was no issue in the network. No night operation is allowed if there is an issue going on. When I came back in front of my PC, Windows had booted and the login window was waiting for me. The session opened after having typed my password, I started opening the files I would need to work then started connecting to the servers I would work on. All of a sudden the blue screen of death appeared and disappeared, it was almost like a flash before my eyes and the computer restarted. When you get a blue screen of death the computer just sits there and usually waits for you to switch it off. As the computer was restarting I told myself to use my Linux partition to copy the files I would need on a USB drive. It was a great idea because the I tried to boot Windows after copying the files but this time the blue screen of death appeared even before the login window. I tried to switch on the computer a few time during the night but in the end nothing was being displayed on the screen anymore not even the computer brand which is the first thing that is being displayed when you switch your laptop on.
My trips to Kiribati and Tahiti came straight to my mind: a HP laptop that works perfectly well the day before but powers on the next day without displaying anything on the screen is not new to me. One could think that it is a screen issue but it just means that the laptop motherboard is dead, the 2 times this has happened to me it was because those boards don't handle humidity very well.
There was 3 choices:
- Find all the HP reseller on the island to buy a new motherboard hoping it wouldn't die 2 days after being installed.
- Ask to have my laptop replaced. I would get a new one that I think is less suited for my work thanks to UPS.
- Remove the hard drive from the laptop, put it in an external case to make it an external hard drive and install on it all the software I need to keep on working whatever the computer I am working on.
After a short night because we stopped working at 5 AM, I went to the first computer store I found and bought an external case. My boss is now used to getting a mail where the subject is « Computer Dead » and where I write: Hi, my computer just died but I can still perform my assignment. We will have to setup a appointment for me to get a new laptop when I will get back to France. Regards.
For sure I can't work on my scuba diving pictures with Picasa anymore but who cares.
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