Death of a Computer

(I feel like my previous post needs to be balanced somewhat. Here at Tilt Lock, we're equal opportunity, and given that most of my computer experience has been with Windows, it seemed only appropriate to devote a post or two to it. Enjoy.)

Before our house went Apple, I had a desktop running Windows XP in my room. For some time, it worked flawlessly––lightning-fast and error-free, simply a joy to use. Computer Nirvana. Then, on a cool autumn day a few years ago, it declared war on my sanity.

I logged on one day and was faced with an ominous message: "An error occurred at address 0x0ADF2845 -- The memory could not be 'read.'" For those of you who don't speak hexadecimal, allow me to translate for you: "Oh, fuck."

From that day on, my poor little Dell desktop was never the same. It became irritable and morose, prone to mood swings and schizophrenic hallucinations. Sadly, they don't make Prozac for computers. Every morning, it would greet me with the same message: "An error occurred at address 0x0ADF2845. I don't understand. Why is this happening to me?"

I actually felt sorry for the thing. You could hear the hard drive grinding in frustration whenever I tried to open a report, and occasionally a depressed thumping sound would emanate from the case, as if the CPU had begun banging its virtual head against a wall. The CD drive would occasionally open, a moment of blind rebellion, then close again as if to say, "What's the point?" 

All my pictures stuck to the top of my documents. Smiley toolbars invaded my browsers. Everything slowed to a crawl. It was obvious the machine was trying, but it just wasn't enough, and soon a veritable chorus of other messages joined the original error. Soon, there was a 50/50 chance that the machine simply wouldn't start up, and even when it did, twenty minutes of confused beeping and whirring was usually enough to convince me to shut it off again.

In the computer's final days, it announced "Microsoft Error Reporting Service has encountered a problem and needs to close." The error reporter had caused an error. The ultimate in recursive failure. That week, we put it out of its misery; we pulled the plug on my confused, depressed little computer, which to this day sits on a high shelf in the basement, gathering dust.