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My Mom Just BSOD'd

S

Super Intendo

macrumors regular
Original poster
May 26, 2008
247
120
I know i shouldnt laugh but i just cant help it.

She calls me into the other room in a terrified voice and when i walk in i look over at her (dell) notebook and she goes "uhm... whats a physical memory dump...?"

I just burst out into laughter. :p hahaha maybe now she'll know why i've been trying to switch her.
 
No one must know!

b6wx0y.png
 
Super Intendo said:
ya but at least thats pretty ;)
Click to expand...

Because a pretty error is better than an ugly one? Even if its referring to the same thing? Please do not tell this to M$, instead of fixing the errors, they will make them "prettier". And then call it a feature. ;)

BSOD's are usually caused by bad memory, or power fluctuations either on the mains, or because of a faulty power supply. Note: I said usually.
 
operator207 said:
Because a pretty error is better than an ugly one? Even if its referring to the same thing? Please do not tell this to M$, instead of fixing the errors, they will make them "prettier". And then call it a feature. ;)

BSOD's are usually caused by bad memory, or power fluctuations either on the mains, or because of a faulty power supply. Note: I said usually.
Click to expand...

What kinds of things cause the kernal panics? I've been having them quite frequently recently and have to say I am not amused . . .
 
This happened to me just a few weeks ago when I was trying to make a slide show presentation to a group of about 100 people at summer camp, mostly kids and teenagers. I was preoccupied with getting an iMovie presentation ready on my MacBook Pro, so one of my friends was busy getting a slide show of about 100 JPEG photos ready on a Toshiba laptop running Vista. That Toshiba had been used earlier in the week to play a video, so I was not concerned about its ability to connect to the projector.

So it was showtime, and the MC introduced the slideshow, the lights dimmed, everyone sat expectantly. We plugged the Toshiba into the projector, and waited... the projector put out a big blue blank screen - "no input detected".

The silence grew uncomfortable. The room was still dark, cast only in a bright blue glow. We were in the back plugging and replugging, hitting Fn-F5, trying to get the unit to switch monitor outputs, to no avail. The little animation on the LCD indicated acknowledgement of what we wanted to do, but there was nothing happening on the projector. We motioned for the MC to stall for some time, which he did. He started leading the kids in a song while we continued to scramble in the back.

We decided to try rebooting the laptop. This seemed to work! The projector detected an input, the screen went black. A gigantic Windows boot logo appeared on the screen. The little progress bar chugged at the bottom. Kids started cheering!

And then -- BOOM! -- a great huge 10-foot-wide BSOD appears in front of everyone. The MC -- awash in bright blue again -- looks behind him and laughs. The kids start cheering. The poor guy who owns the Toshiba laptop is mortified.

Ultimately we ask the MC to move on with other parts of the evening program while we continue to work in the back. I grab my USB stick and copy the pictures off the Toshiba (after we have rebooted into safe mode) and onto my MacBook Pro, where we import them into iPhoto and prepare a slideshow there. We finish just in time, and they're ready to try the slideshow again.

I plug the projector into my Mac, and press "Play Slideshow" in iPhoto. The projector is detected, the screen fades to black, and the slideshow works perfectly.

And this is why I use a Mac.
 
macworkerbee said:
What kinds of things cause the kernal panics? I've been having them quite frequently recently and have to say I am not amused . . .
Click to expand...

Kernel panics are usually hardware related, bad RAM being the typical cause. Sometimes plugging in USB or FW devices can cause it also. It's really a process of elimination to determine the root cause.
 
Oooh I know how you feel.

My own father who isn't so bad of a PC user was calling me into his office saying:

"Oh my goodness, why is the computer making so much noise!"

Apparently the desktop was just working a little hard. He was just running too many background services, so I shut some down to ease XP a bit.

I just went out of the room snickering. :D

But, my Mom is even worse...

She called me over one night, and she said, "I can't connect to the internet!"

I was like, "Mom, did you turn the modem on?"

lol. She forgot to do that simple step.

Ahhhh PCs... can't wait to get rid of mine. :D But, they do make pretty comical tales.
 
gauchogolfer said:
Kernel panics are usually hardware related, bad RAM being the typical cause. Sometimes plugging in USB or FW devices can cause it also. It's really a process of elimination to determine the root cause.
Click to expand...

Thanks, I guess I'll have to look into it a bit more. I recently got an external drive from OWC using FW800 so that might be the problem, or I guess some of my ram could be dying. Thanks for the info.
 
Oh yeah, what's the easiest way to test my RAM? I have 8 sticks (paired) totaling 5GB on a G5 Quad. I have had them for almost three years and have not installed new RAM or exchanged it in that entire time frame.
 
My old PC was the winner (or loser really) of BSOD, it was very trigger happy about them, it used to average at about 4 an hour,

I was once privileged enough to get 14 in 20 minutes :D that was a unproductive day...
 
operator207 said:
Because a pretty error is better than an ugly one? Even if its referring to the same thing? Please do not tell this to M$, instead of fixing the errors, they will make them "prettier". And then call it a feature. ;)

BSOD's are usually caused by bad memory, or power fluctuations either on the mains, or because of a faulty power supply. Note: I said usually.
Click to expand...

Bad drivers can also cause them, but any decent windows laptop should never get them.
 
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