Thursday 21 June, 2007

Installing Windows on the Rocks !!!

You must have had vodka, whisky on the rocks but have you ever tried installing Windows on the rocks ? I did !

This is what happened with me few days back.

I had installed Windows XP on my laptop and it work working perfectly fine, except that IE was misbehaving. For 1-2 other reasons, I planned to reinstall Windows on my machine.
I guess this was a bad decision which turned out to be quite interesting and memorable.

I burned an ISO image of Windows Performance Edition on a DVD. Booted my laptop using it. Within a minute the laptop turned off.
(What was that? I thought.)
I switched on the laptop again. N within a minute it was off (What the f*** ?). Tried 2-3 times more, but no luck.
Shit, what to do ? When did i buy the notebook? Is it still under warranty?
May be! Looked through all the documents in my drawer... ahaa.. Finally found the Bill. God !! The warranty expired 3 days back.
What to do now ??? ( Shell out few thousands bucks from your pocket).
:-( Poor me !

Now what ?
Since you have to pay the vendor for getting it repaired, y not use some tricks and tweaks and try to fix it yourself. Do some R & D.
Just a sec. I remember purchasing extra RAM from Nehru Place. Could that b the problem ?? Who knows ?

I made up my mind to open the laptop and remove the RAM and try installing Windows without the additional RAM which I have bought from the gray market.
I had never opened any laptop before, but this time I did it. Removed the memory, and tried reinstalling the OS.
But alas !! Hard luck. Same problem.

Finally I packed everything and thought of going out for a movie.
As I was packing my laptop, I realized that it is very hot. (It generally doesn't heat up so much). Is this a heating problem ? Umm.... ? Pata nahi..
How can i find that ? It's summers. I don't have AC and it can't be arranged. How to make a cool environment ?

It's quite interesting what I did from here. Instead of laughing you should praise me for whatever I did. In the beginning it may sound weird.

I opened my refrigerator's door, held my laptop in front of it and tried to boot the system. (I wish this may work).
Switched on.. 10 secs.. 20 .. 40.. and switched off... Shit..
Try in front of the freezer .. yes man !! It worked for almost a minute. Wow !!!
So it's the heating problem. (I was as happy as if I completed some major research).

Now everything started moving fast. I took 3 ice trays, place the ice cubes in a utensil and on top of it my laptop.
Left a small gap so that air could reach in. Sat under the fan.

You wont' believe my system was up and running Windows in 21 minutes.
I checked to see how hot the air was coming out from heat sink. It was cold.

I gave myself a pat.

This job was quite satisfying. I was happy, picked popcorn, Coke and watched a movie (I deserve that, did a gr8 job).

24 comments:

rajat said...

so... u proved it . that even bill gates cant overcome the indian mind! haan???.. u damn proved it. and believe me.. u missed the chance to record this all.. if u wuld have i am sure u wuld have been called a wierdest engineer!
now talking to the point i guess u did pretty risky yet important and kinda realll r&d work!
best of luck buddy!

Anonymous said...

Good and very funny..

I think you should watch http://videos.krify.com for animated fun ... enjoy

Anonymous said...

splendid....... u proved u r an engineer with Indian brain...... actually i define engineering as minimum input n max output.....dats wat u did......superb.....good to hav u in family !!..... next time clean da lappy from inside when u open it.... dust once removed from interiors work wonders..... dust actually does not allow heat to radiate.....

Anonymous said...

Next time, try dry ice. LOL

But anyway, take some compressed air and blow out your heatsink because dust likes to collect in the fins.

FRANCISCO SOUSA said...

Hey!!! That was Cool, I too try such stuff ( diagnosing my pc) and try to repair stuff myself...
And to tell you the truth, it really helps me inturn..

Continue repairing the faults...
But... Sometimes repair cannot be avoided...
So take the right decision...
Have Fun

Anonymous said...

Its Cool!!!
Me too with the same R&D even I suggest that every one should do the same R&D with their Gadgets... to explore it!!!
But i would not like it to do with My Vaio thinkpad....
:P

Sriram Viswanathan said...

that was great !!...

i think you should document this process and circulate it to all... you know why :) !!

but it works only in laptops....can't be done in destop pc's.... so i had to re-assemble my processor fan when the same problem occoured to me :( !!

Tripti said...

Oh my God!!!!!

Anonymous said...

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Anonymous said...

Amazing turn of events!
Reminds me of those akbar birbal n malgudi days stories...desperate measures for desperate situations..i'm glad you shared this incident with the world...who says geeks don't have fun?

Siddharth Chaturvedi said...

Thanks for sharing this-This has to be INDIAgenouity at its best! I sometimes wonder weather spending billions of dollars on some lame research by organizations and govt’s across the globe is worth the juice. Instead hire some creative thinkers and situation to handle in any god forsaken environment and you have results that no research can come out with. Examples like this galore across India- Hail another succesful attempt of Indian JUGAD.

Shiv Narayan Gautam said...

Now that is called a real ice chilling way to run a system. :D

Super Cool (literally)

-=BlinD=- said...

same probs here lol. i am having da big fan and air condition turned on for da f**king VAIO
DAMN Pentium4!!!

gr8developer said...

Mine is AMD Turion 64 bit.

Ankit said...

Icy....Icy....Cool....Cool

A gud blog dear......but plz put a Note over here that it will be for only gr8 hearts ppl not 4 every1.....

Apart 4 that...u did a gr8 job....keep writing such blogs so that a general ppl get aware bt all r&d services or tricks & tweaks....

Ankit said...

Icy....Icy....Cool....Cool

A gud blog dear......but plz put a Note over here that it will be for only gr8 hearts ppl not 4 every1.....

Apart 4 that...u did a gr8 job....keep writing such blogs so that a general ppl get aware bt all r&d services or tricks & tweaks....

Ankit said...

Icy.......Icy... Cool.... Cool

A gr8 adventure dear....but hey put a Note that it is not 4 kids..... :)

Well....keep writing the blogs so that a general ppl get aware bt the tricks & tweaks....

Ankit said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Gauri Shankar said...

hmm...good job man...and really a nice post!!

Divya said...

really a funny one....

Anonymous said...

Subrat Acharya


thanda thanda cool cool ....
A hot story with a cool ending.

nice job

Unknown said...

wow... as usual!
once a genius, alwayz a genius....

Unknown said...

Funny... but very intellegent move! that's y - I PROUD TO BE AN INDIAN :-)

Anonymous said...

I think this type of incident was not new to you. You have solved this type of incident many time.

Bye the way cong8....

And next time keep in mind that your refrigerator has sufficient Ice Cubes......
:)

Keep doing such types of things because these maintains your identity(a Computer geek) in our mind.