My Shuttle computer is out of commission at the moment. I really love that box. I had absolutely no issues bringing it on my plane to Atlanta. Wherever I go there’s always space to put it somewhere. It’s a very pretty, fast, convenient piece of hardware… However, it’s not working anymore! Just the other day I tried to power it, and I got no signal to the monitor. My 8800GT kept whining at full fan speed(suppose to drop to 29% of that after a couple of seconds). I played around with the RAM, CMOS, and pulled components. Nothing.Luckily I had a VGA cable I borrowed from a roommate, therefore I could use the onboard GPU, and it finally sprung to life. I tracked down the problem. Apparently my Bios is out of date. I snatched the latest one and was ready to flash the chip to perfection(hopefully). After erasing the main block, the computer began to write the new Bios block. 1%…5%…10%. Okay…Wait! What’s this? Computer? Are you responding?

BSOD.

I restarted the computer and created the biggest paperweight known to man. I’m calling Shuttle tomorrow to reflash my Bios chip, hopefully that’ll resolve EVERYTHING.

Sorry if this post seems too technical, I can’t explain my frustrations without technobabble.

The funny thing is, within 5 minutes after the demise of my Shuttle, I found out that some pins on my motherboard could be loose - that would affect the 8800GT not being detected. I also found out I used the wrong version of Winflash, (there’s a specific version for Vista) which bricked your Shuttle if you tried flashing. Great. Pat on the back Dan.

School resumes tomorrow too. Everything is excellent!

Edit (1/21): RMA’d video card came back. That works fine. Now there’s something wrong with the barebones itself, so I sent that out via UPS today. ~$60 shipping to CA. Ouch.

Tags: Personal //