Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Too Many Games!

First a little background. You many have seen me complaining about computer issues on my Twitter over the last few days but the problem I've been having has actually been going on for a few months. The problem (minor random short freezes) was annoying but could be put up with and it was on my games machine not my main work one. For a long time I was convinced it was a software issue, which my Google research seemed to back up. I was led to believe that when Service Pack 1 was released for Windows 7 that it would be fixed. That turned out to not be the case. So at the end of last week I finally sat down to try and figure out what was the cause. Reinstalling Windows didn't help, the problem was still there. Reinstalling without updates didn't work either. Knowing that I finally started to look at the hardware and after a lot of trials and deduction I found that my main hard drive seemed to be causing the problem, although I still don't know why. However with that knowledge I could buy a new hard drive and begin the process of reinstalling all my programs. As my old drive had not completely failed I still had access to all my old save game files. In the process of restoring those files you end up firing up the game to check that it's working and restore correctly. This leads to thoughts like "Wow, I've not played this for ages" or "I really should finish this game", but when that happens 10-15 times you begin to wonder where to start! Still at least all is back to normal now and that choice will become irrelevant sometime in the next two days when Dragon Age II drops through the letterbox.

1 comment:

  1. This made me smile, I could just imagine you being tempted to have another go of all those games!
    But I do hope your analysis is right - and I'm sure it will be - and that a new hard drive will solve the random freezing problem.
    They just better deliver Dragon Age II to the right flat on the right day, that's what. I am keeping my fingers crossed that everything is OK this time, but then perhaps it is Royal Mail and that will be OK.

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