August 17, 2007

Stupid computer tricks

So I was checking my email earlier, and then, as usual, I closed the laptop and set it on the floor to watch TV.  About an hour later, I picked it up, and it was REALLY hot.  Like it was trying to work and couldn't get the fan on.  So I picked it up and set it on the fan pad we have, and opened it up.  The screen was black and said "Can not find Operating System".

After two panicked seconds I restarted it, and everything seems to be working fine, except Firefox seems to have reloaded all of my extensions, as if I had just installed them for the first time, and I had to reset my profile and reload my rss feed list into Sage.  All my buttons and bookmarks were present, though.

Anybody got any clue?  Virus check didn't find anything new....  It seems to be cooling down, too.

It also has this trick of unfastening the battery because the fan pad pushes the lock bar over, but it hasn't done that in a while, so I think this is unrelated to that.....

Oh, and it's a Sony VAIO VGN-SZ330P running Windows XP.

Posted by caltechgirl at August 17, 2007 01:20 AM | TrackBack
Comments

That's freaky, but so often lately our systems have been acting weird. Not exactly like your problem, but odd little things... makes me wonder if the myriad software installed are all fighting it out in a huge duel... :/

Posted by: pam at August 17, 2007 05:47 AM

I have a Sony Vaio - I don't like it. Period. I can usually figure out software and what's going on - but the Vaio seems to have this weirdness to it that I can not understand.

Makes me think Sony installed some of their own garbage on it as a "help". *sigh*

You may want to run a check and see if you lost some sectors on your hard drive... but if it's working there's not much point. With XP - depending on how it's set up - it may have overheated - lost the sector with the current set of profiles and pulled an earlier set from the XP backup. Then again, maybe not. Hard to say.

My advice - never ever set your laptop on the floor or anyplace else flat without having something underneath to allow circulation. My husband runs a laptop on his desk and sets the back end of it up on one of those trianglular shaped rulers (which he just happened to have in his drawer). This keeps the underside cool.

Posted by: Teresa at August 17, 2007 05:58 AM

I would run defrag to help clean up your files. If you are not sure how to start it, email me off line.....

Posted by: Amy at August 17, 2007 07:24 PM