DOH…

By Mark on Tuesday 28 October 2003 at 14:54

Last night, after watching some Simpsons episodes with Neo, I went down to my room to check my email.

When I turned my computer on, it made a load of clicking sounds, and then when I tried to log in, the keyboard didn't respond and the whole machine froze. Great, I thought, my keyboard has mysteriously broken overnight. I got my old keyboard out of the pile of miscellaneous computer bits in our hallway (yes, I know what you're thinking), plugged it in, and rebooted. Same problem.

After trying four different keyboards, I started thinking that maybe it was one of the drives playing up, so I unplugged them all, except the system drive. Still the same.

The motherboard was the next suspect, so I went into the BIOS setup, where things were going completely haywire. Anything I selected immediately began cycling through all its' options; it was almost like someone was holding down the Page Down key constantly. However, at this point, there wasn't even a keyboard connected…

Now things were beginning to get scary. On Thursday (this Thursday) I have a meeting with a client and all the files for that project are on that PC. I asked Neo what he thought, and we tried a few more horrendously technical things, but nothing would work.

Finally, after nearly three hours and resigned to the fact that my PC's motherboard was totally screwed, I started looking on the web (on my laptop) for a new one. I bent down to look at the model number on the existing board, and it was only then I noticed a blue USB lead coming from the back of the PC (the only thing I hadn't unplugged)…

The blue lead led across my room, to… a USB numeric keypad which I use to remotely control my music software without having to get up from my synthesizer.

With (you guessed it) a magazine resting on the Page Down Key.

7 comments:

On Tuesday 28 October 2003 at 18:48, Al said:

Man I laughed at that one......I love it when things like that happen....

On Tuesday 28 October 2003 at 21:23, kavi said:

seriously.....HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA

On Wednesday 29 October 2003 at 09:09, Mark Bell said:

Thanks for your sympathy guys Wink

On Wednesday 29 October 2003 at 12:38, palmer said:

i feel the sympathy but i'm still laughing...

On Wednesday 29 October 2003 at 12:39, palmer said:

...and laughing

On Wednesday 29 October 2003 at 12:39, palmer said:

...and laughing Wink

On Wednesday 5 November 2003 at 08:39, Matt said:

I feel your pain - on the first installation of XP after building my PC (with an obsessive amount of care and attention), I was asked to press F8 to continue. I must have pressed it a thousand times, each time wondering why it didn't work, knowing that it should work, and concluding that its bound to work if I press it again.

Then (after about half an hour of button pressing) I see a button marked “F-Lock” and realise that the F# keys have their F# as their second function... (Thanks Micro$oft, after making me learn shortcuts for years, you now give me a keyboard with buttons for cut, paste, undo, etc,).

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