My Computer Has Lupus

I have reached the point of no return with my computer. I turned it on yesterday morning...and continued trying to turn it on for the next half an hour, at which point I had to give up and go to work. I tried some more yesterday afternoon and finally got it to start, but with entirely unsatisfactory results. The same thing has been happening today.

Here is the problem. When I turn on my computer, it does all the pre-flight checks and asks me for my password. Then, as it boots up, I get the following error message:

There is a problem with your display settings. The adapter type is incorrect, or the current settings do not work with your hardware.

In other words, my hardware and my software seem to be mutually allergic to one another. Wonderful.

When faced with this message, there were two options given: "OK" or "Cancel". Kind of reminds me of the old "Abort, Retry, Ignore?" bit I got from Bill all those years ago. Anyway, I chose "OK". That didn't work. It brought up another error message that ran on for about half a page, none of which was any help at all. Then it tried to restart my computer, which just ended up hanging the system in the middle of the process. I had to do a hard reboot, which led to the blue ScanDisk screen, followed by - you guessed it - entering my password and getting "There is a problem with your display settings...." Lather, rinse, repeat.

So I chose "Cancel" one time. That path was only slightly less useless. It actually allowed me to log on to my machine, after lecturing me about display settings and hardware some more. But it allowed me to go into the right-click "Settings" menu. I changed the settings back to what they had been before all of this started. Then it told me I needed to restart my computer. That led to freezing, followed by hard reboot, ScanDisk, and "There is a problem with your display settings...."

<hulk> Must. Control. Rage. </hulk>

The good news is that I finally found a display setting that works. The bad news is that it's 640 by 480 pixels. And 16 colors. Just in time to use the DSL/broadband router and cabling I installed just two days ago, for which I paid around $65.

So that's it. I'm in the process of backing up and recording anything worth saving, and then I'm going to cut my losses, wipe the hard drive, and start all over again.

I hope to be back online again soon. Until then, kindly ignore any enraged, obscenity-laden yelling you may hear coming from the direction of Salt Lake City.