Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with crash

Ahh, Vista... how I won't miss you.

NotMyselfRightNow — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 17:38:14 -0800

Questions about hard drives, enclosures, and other ways to survive a blue screen of death. I have a HP desktop running Vista. I went to do a SP1 upgrade ahead of a potential change to Win7, something went off course, and now I own a desktop that won’t get past a blue screen of death when I try and start up. I’ve tried a handful of things to resolve the issue to no avail, and at this point, I’m just ready to get a new desktop (had been thinking about it anyway, so I figure this is a sign from the computer gods).

99% of my data was backed up ahead of the upgrade. However, I would like to be able to access the data on the old HP just in case. Limited technical knowledge, but a history of reading AskMe questions, leads me to believe that I can remove my HD from the old desktop, place it in an enclosure, and access it like an external drive.

How complicated is this? Is it really that straightforward? Anything I’m not thinking of?

Why is Windows XP freezing and refusing to shut down?

ZsigE — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 17:20:52 -0800

Windows XP freezes, audio has disappeared and returned, system hangs on shutdown...my PC has suddenly taken a turn for the worse, and nothing I've tried seems to be helping. So...help? I'm running XP Home on a self-built PC (Asus M2A-VM HDMI motherboard, AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000 dual core processor, ATI Radeon HD 3600 graphics), which has been running happily for just over a year. Today it started behaving oddly - Firefox hung while I was opening a new tab, followed by the entire PC freezing so completely that I had to hold down the power button to switch it off. On reboot, my sound had disappeared - subsequent reboots showed that all my audio devices had vanished.

Shutdowns no longer work (I get to the "Windows is shutting down" screen and then it sits there apparently indefinitely). The PC dual-boots Ubuntu, so I tried that - the sound was fine, so it's not a hardware problem, and I can shut down from there with no problems. When I went back into Windows, my audio devices had mysteriously returned, but shutdowns were still broken, and it still hung intermittently.

I dug out the motherboard install CD and reinstalled the chipset, audio and LAN drivers. I then went to Asus's website to look for updated versions - found reasonably new audio drivers, which then crashed halfway through installation. So none of that seems to be helping.

Subsequent hangs seem to have come on gradually - Firefox stops responding, followed by whatever I click on. In one case, I saw Firefox die, then the Start menu, then the whole taskbar, then Google Desktop, then Launchy, then the keyboard (Num Lock stopped switching its LED on and off). Ctrl-Alt-Del added the usual icon to the system tray, but the window didn't appear.

Basically, I'm stumped. I've seen fewer crashes in Firefox since disabling all its extensions, but I doubt that was the initial cause. Any ideas as to which avenues I could try next?

Crash Course

weapons-grade pandemonium — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 20:47:54 -0800

PC crash. How to progress from here? It's a two year-old HP Pavilion m8327c running Vista. Had some FireFox crashes in the last few days. Today the display started flickering, the whites turning to vertical yellow lines, pixelated colors, etc. Ran System Restore and got up again for a while, then display started disintegrating again. Started in safe mode, but things seemed to get worse. Eventually even System Restore didn't work. Have run HijackThis and Adaware regularly, and NOD32 is up to date. Never had problems with viruses. Computer is very dusty; I plan to blow it out tomorrow. Unplugged now, and I'm working from my old computer.

What is the most likely cause? What is the best way to proceed from here? My son has a pretty rad computer we can use to transfer files, etc. TIA.

massive Chrome memory leak

drlith — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 05:27:05 -0800

How to correct sudden massive Chrome memory leak? More like a memory hemorrage.

A few days ago, my computer running Windows 64-bit Vista started having serious performance issues. I've tracked this down to the Chrome browser. As soon as I start up Chrome, memory usage starts to climb precipitously, and within 30 seconds approaches 95+% memory usage and the system grinds to a halt.

This occurs when running Chrome version 3.0.195.33. I tried re-downloading and re-installing Chrome without success. I don't recall updating Chrome on the day this started happening, but I also can't guarantee that I didn't. I have not had any problems with Chrome previously. I have no problems when running Firefox or IE.

Why Does Firefox Keep Crashing on Certain Pages

willnot — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 13:32:58 -0800

What is causing Firefox to crash when I scroll to a specific area of specific pages? I'm running:

Firefox 3.5.5
Mac OS 10.6.2
1Password 2.11.1
Adblock Plus 1.1.1Flashblock 1.5.11.2
FoxyProxy 2.14
Phoenity Modern 0.8.09.07.17

For Instance

Am I overreacting, or was my instructor's film choice really inappropriate?

kitcat — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 11:45:06 -0800

Was it inappropriate for my instructor to have us view and write about this film for our midterm? I need some other viewpoints on this situation: I'm taking an Organization Behaviour class as part of my IT diploma program. For our midterm, we had to view Paul Haggis' Crash (not the Crohnenberg film). If you've seen the film, it addresses racial strife in LA. I have to admit, I don't like the instructor and I'm baffled by his film choice - a film about - I don't know, an organization - would have been made a lot more sense. But what's really been bothering me is that the film has a scene where a woman is molested, in a very explicit, disgusting and camera-lingering fashion.

I'm the only woman in the class (enrollment in the entire program is less than 10% female, so this is not uncommon). Furthermore, there is only one black student and one Asian student in our class (if you haven't seen the film, the racism it shows centers around black people, Asians and Hispanics - no Hispanics in the class) We didn't *have* to watch it together as a class, but most of us chose to do that instead of going home and renting it.

Even as a 29 year-old woman, I felt uncomfortable watching the molestation scene with my mostly 21 year-old classmates (would it have felt different if they were older? I don't know). I can't speak for how the other students felt.

If I was teaching a class with one student in a wheelchair, I would not show a film depicting any kind of harassment towards people with mobility issues. Unless the course was about mobility issues. I would only show a film with racism if there was a module specifically about racism. And I don't know if I would ever, ever show a film depicting sexual violence towards women.

Please help me figure out specifically what is it about this that's got me feeling like something yicky has happened? Was the film choice inappropriate, what kind of inappropriate, and should I write a letter about this to the department? Or am I simply out to lunch, or using the film choice as an excuse to disparage an instructor I already dislike?

Finally, please don't tell me that watching this film was good for me/us. I'm a former lit major, and this depictions of race here are extremely problematic.

Humpty Dumpty played with a drive...

Static Vagabond — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 08:17:45 -0800

Damaged harddrive-- need to recover one particular file, but due to the damage, only perhaps 30% of the file is intact. What tools are available to just pull that 30% back? The drive is working to a degree-- if I freeze it I can get directory listings and see the file I want, but when I drag the file off the drive, windows errors out with a CRC error after about 30% and so the file fails to move/copy.

I'm looking for a tool that will keep what it can from the file.

So if the file is like (where G is good and B is bad) :

GGGGGGBBBGGGGGGBBGGGG I'd ideally like to 'recover' the good portions, so I'm left with either
GGGGGG___GGGGGG__GGGG or even just
GGGGGG

I don't care about the bad areas, or want the system to think too hard about querying them (drive only stays nice and chilly for so long).

I thought about installing an FTP server and ftping the file off the drive, but I'm hoping some mefites know of a more speciailized tool for the job, which might also grab those later good parts of the file. Windows options preferred.

Hard drive trouble?

R a c h e l — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 17:59:55 -0800

Hard drive(I think) corrupted - I'm drowning in information. Help? I'm sure this has been addressed elsewhere but since there are so many different problems that happen with computers/hard drives/etc, I'm having a lot of trouble differentiating.

Me: HP Laptop, running Vista and an expired beta of windows 7 on different partitions. Also have a recovery partition installed by HP but that's just the OS and stuff, not my stuff. I almost always use(d) Vista, and all my files are accessible from there.

Problem: Vista only starts up partway,then gets stuck with a blank screen (after the "Windows loading" screen). I eventually power it down, turn it on, and the computer suggests I try startup recovery, which fails.

Oh: a note: my dad may have been the last one to turn on my computer before this happens, and he said it said something about installing an update (I think he said a service pack, but there hasn't been a new one recently - why would this be installing now? I usually just let the automatic updaters work their mojo, don't pay too much attention to it, so I can't provide more detail, sorry)

In the 'details' section, the two tests that startup recovery said failed were Unknown bugcheck: Bugcheck 50 (with some parameters listed - I can provide those if it's helpful) and then it said repair action: system files integrity and repair. Result: failed. Error code: Ox2

Then, the other "root cause found" by startup repair was "System volume on disk is corrupt. Repair action: File system repair (chkdsk) Result: completed successfully Error code: OxO

It tells me that startup repair failed. If I power it down and start again, the same thing happens.

Windows 7 works fine, if that's relevant.

So, my question is multifold(Is that a word?): Can this be repaired? Can I recover my pictures etc on my harddrive (yes, I know I should have backed them up, was actually external harddrive shopping the day that this happened)? I have another, legal, copy of Vista. Can I install that(after recovering my data)? About how much will data recovery cost?

Thanks so much, this is my first Ask MeFi question so I'm a little nervous. Do let me know if I did anything wrong!

What's causing my new computer to crash?

chndrcks — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 15:19:14 -0800

My new computer freezes or reboots when I'm pushing it (e.g. encoding video). Can you help me figure out which part is bad before I start having to ship things back to newegg and pay restocking fees? CPU: Core i5
MB: MSI P55-CD5
RAM: Crucial 4GB (2x2) DDR3 1333
PSU: 500W OCZ ModXStream Pro
VIDEO: MSI Geforce 9600 GT
HD: Samsung 1TB 7200RPM

It's usually fine for low intensity use (web browsing, office, etc.), but if I push it (say video encoding), it typically crashes within about 20 minutes. In Windows 7, sometimes it reboots, sometimes it just freezes. I had one BSOD. I think it also reboot once in Linux (gentoo), while running genkernel (unless that was some other problem)

My guess is it's either the RAM or the Motherboard. I have memtest86+ running right now, but so far it's been running for an hour and done 2 complete passes with no errors. On the other hand, one of the newegg reviews says:

This RAM does not play nicely with 1156 motherboards with the P55 chipset. Two other reviewers have mentioned rebooting issues with Gigabyte boards, and my Intel DP55WB had the same problem.

Did some testing and found that during PC-Check, the RAM would always lock up/reboot once it got to the block rotation test, but would pass MemTest.

PC-Check's price is not listed on their website, which leads me to believe it's out of my budget for the limited use to which I'll put it. As such, I cannot try to replicate these results myself.

Also, I've changed the Command Rate to 2T, but the problem still persists.

If it's not the RAM, it may be the motherboard. Is there any good way to test this other than trying new RAM and seeing if the problem persists?

The other thought I had was that the PSU isn't strong enough. I found a PSU calculator online which suggests it should be fine. Besides what I listed above, there's an old IDE hard drive (which is only connected right now to transfer files) and an internal CD-RW drive. There's also a USB DVD drive and a USB printer, but those both have their own power.

Does the hivemind have any suggests on the best and cheapest way to figure out what I should return? Also, do you have any suggestions on what I should replace that part with?

Thanks!

Computer BSODing at random

sailoreagle — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 20:15:04 -0800

Windows Vista 64. Computer started bluescreening at random a few days ago, with increasing frequency - it's up to several per day now. Pretty much every single bluescreen so far has happened with the computer entirely idle - nobody was even sitting at it. There's no file given as the reason; the message given sometimes is PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA, and sometimes isn't given at all.

The computer also appears to be unable to install the Vista Service Pack 2. The first time we attempted to install SP2, it was mid-install and then it BSOD'd; on reboot, it kept trying to revert changes and BSOD'ing every time, over and over. Booting into safe mode solved the endless loop, but since then, we're still unable to install it - it'll go through the motions, reboot, get to 96% and then say "Unable to install - reverting changes". The "Installation was not successful" screen details gives me an error of "ERROR_NO_PROC_SLOTS(0x80070059)".

The computer is barely one year old and has worked perfectly fine so far (up until the 28th of August, which is when this all started). I'm completely clueless as to what may be causing this, as sometimes it'll go days between BSOD's (we always shut it down at night, if it matters any), sometimes it'll BSOD three or four times in a single hour. It seems to be completely random.

So much for the car and vacation

icarus — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 23:22:17 -0800

I was in a pretty crappy head-on collision with another car tonight. Advice on what to do? My husband was driving and I was in the passenger seat. The 16 year old girl that crashed into us (found 100% at fault by police and was cited) gave me all of her insurance information and when I asked her if she was ok she said she was fine; obviously she was pretty shaken up, but looked like she suffered no injuries.

My husband was taken from the scene to an emergency room, they checked his neck (the headrest snapped back towards him and jabbed him pretty hard in the neck upon impact). I'm fine except a minor scratch.

We had both taken the entire upcoming week as vacation, which we will now have to spend at home.

Our car was towed and I assume is pretty totaled. I took 2 photos, but it was pretty dark and I was more worried about my husband than about being a good photographer.

What are our options? I know you are not my lawyer, I doubt I need a lawyer.

I'm not looking to sue for injuries, pain, suffering, or any other bs like that.

I want to know if I am entitled to a rental car, how long can I hold on to the rental car? How long do I have to find a replacement car? Is there anything else I should know about being 100% not at fault and yet having my car smashed, my vacation ruined, and my husband on pain pills?

Curtail computer use during the current heatwave?

Auden — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 17:18:13 -0800

West Coast Heatwave! I'm worried about my computer's hard drives, should I curtail my downloads and turn some drives off for the next few days until things cool down? So...it's 105 degrees Fahrenheit outside today - with a repeat performance set for tomorrow and thursday. In my non-air conditioned apartment, (with several fans running) it feels at least that hot.

How worried should I be about my computer and its hard drives?
I've got a well ventilated case with plenty of internal fans, but it's record-breaking hot...

Should I turn off the external drives for the next few days? Stop running torrents and video/music downloads? When I poll my internal drives with SpeedFan, they range from 48C to 56C; it worries me, especially since a 2.5" portable drive I was using for back-up sang its click of death swan song yesterday (I've since created a new back-up)... anyway.

Advice?

Firefox Crashing on Mac every 5min

lemonfridge — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 11:51:55 -0800

Firefox on my iBook keeps crashing :( Not sure what has triggered it, but every 5min I get the spinny beach ball of death in FireFox 3.5.1 on my iBook G4 (OSX 10.5.6).

I've tried disabling every extension but it still dies and requires a force quit and restart.

Any suggestions? Sorry for being so brief - but I have to.

No, we don't watch it just for the crashes

Ickster — Thu, 21 May 2009 07:24:33 -0800

How is collateral damage from rallying handled? I've watched WRC from afar (I live in the US) and have seen a few videos of non-WRC rallying. Being from the states, where it's impossible to imagine rallying like this ever being allowed because of our liability laws, I've always wondered if property owners adjoining the course have any way to object to the rally being run, and how they're compensated for any damage that occurs.

The most obvious solution would seem to be that the organizers pay for it out of entrance fees, but with the amount of damage that happens, it seems like entrance fees would either be prohibitive (and there seem to be a lot of amateurs) or organizers would go broke pretty quickly.

Forget-Me-Not

geekyguy — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 10:06:24 -0800

Firefox Forget-Me-Not: My browser no longer seems to remember me. When I launch Firefox 3.0.9 I am no longer automatically logged into the sites I have set to load on open. I usually have 25+ tabs open at a time and have Firefox set to 'Show my windows and tabs from last time'.

When I visit a site, like Metafilter, I am no longer automatically logged in. Instead, when I click the [Login] link, my username and password are already there so I haven't lost my saved passwords, just the automatic passing of that information from one session to another.

Incidentally, my browser crashes fairly regularly, at a rate of 3 crashes in a 2 day period. I figure it is due to the high number of tabs I run with. Yes, it is annoying but as long as the browser remembers me, I have been able to live with it.

The laptop in question is a dual 2ghz 64-bit Windows Vista Home Premium with 4g RAM. The browser in question is Firefox 3.0.9 running the following add-ons:
Delicious Bookmarks
Evernote Web Clipper
Forecastfox
Greasemonkey
Microsoft .NET Framework Assistant
RealPlayer Browser Record Plugin
Skype Extension for Firefox

Emergency responders and accident victims - share knowledge from your experience

txvtchick — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 12:20:33 -0800

What happens after a serious, possibly fatal, accident or crash? NOT an insurance question. Some time ago, Mr. TXVT wrote an "Emergency Information" letter and put a copy in our cars. It contains information on how to contact each of us, and how to contact our next of kin in case we're both in the same accident.

This got me thinking about how little I know about what occurs following an accident. So, I have a series of accident-related questions. I am in Texas, but could get into a car accident anywhere in the continental US, or fall off a ladder in my own front yard:

1. How is the responder determined? (Austin area Me-Fiers: I've seen the Hudson Bend Fire Dept responding to calls way out on Hamilton Pool Road a couple of times, and am confused because the Dripping Springs FD is a lot closer than Hudson Bend).

2. How do they decide what hospital to take you to? If we listed a preferred hospital in our "Emergency Info" document would that carry any weight? Does carrying an insurance card factor into the decision at all or is it usually just the nearest hospital?

3. Who tracks down next of kin and how do they find them? Do they even look in the glove compartment? What if, say, you are a single person living in a different state from the rest of your family? It seems like it would be nearly impossible to figure out who to call.

4. What other things should we do to prepare for the possibility of a serious accident, either an auto accident or one in your house or wherever? Other than trying to avoid them, of course.

Thanks!

What happened to PMI?

GatorFan2000 — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 09:50:14 -0800

Why hasn't private mortgage insurance (PMI) softened the blow of the real estate implosion? You can't turn on the TV these days without hearing about the mortgage implosion. People are walking away from their severely depreciated homes and leaving the banks scrambling to make up for the shortfall between the remaining mortgage balance and the current home value. One thing I don't understand however, is why private mortgage insurance hasn't softened the blow. Isn't it supposed to make the lender whole if the homebuyer walks away and stops paying? I know you are no longer obligated to pay it after you have 20% equity in your home, but I'm assuming most of the subprime borrowers defaulting on their loans had exotic mortgages that did not require them to put down large down payments (if any). I'm hoping someone knowledgeable in the mortgage industry can shed some light on this.

In what percentage of large passenger jet crashes are there any survivors? And on those occasions, what is the average survival rate?

Joe Beese — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 18:03:49 -0800

In what percentage of large passenger jet crashes are there any survivors? And on those occasions, what is the average survival rate?

Computer crashes after a few minutes. I've tried everything.

gregr — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 07:53:56 -0800

My computer crashes a few minutes after it boots about 50% of the time. If the computer doesn't crash in the first few minutes it won't typically crash. The crashes are strange; the audio coming out the speakers studders, then the mouse stops moving, and then everything on the monitors stop moving (the monitors stay static until I reboot). No blue/black screen and it doesn't unfreeze even if I wait 20-30 minutes. I have to reset the computer to get it working again. I work in IT, and have tried lots of things to fix this problem. Some of the things I've tried as well as the specs on the machine are listed inside. I reinstalled windows, installed every windows update, installed all of the latest drivers listed on my motherboard's website, flashed the bios, installed the latest GPU drivers, and the problem continues. Nothing is overclocked except the GPU which is factory overclocked. I've got all of the cables tied down and tucked away, and the air flow feels pretty good. I've run memtest and some other diagnostics and nothing so far points to a problem. I can run cpu/gpu/ram stress tests and the computer doesn't crash. It doesn't look the computer is overheating.

I have two backup copies of all of the data on the system, so I'm not too worried about loosing data.

System Specs:

OS: Vista x64 Ultimate
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3P
CPU: Core 2 Duo E6750
Cooler: Zalman 9700 CPU (With Arctic Silver)
Ram: 4x G.Skill 2GB PC2-6400
GPU: MSI RX3870X2-T2D1G OC Radeon HD 3870 X2 1GB 512-bit
OS Drive: Western Digital Caviar 250GB
Storage Drive: Western Digital Caviar 750GB
Swap Raid: 3x Western Digital Raptor 36GB (In RAID 0 using windows software RAID)
Wireless card: EW-7128g
Power Supply: ZALMAN ZM750-HP 750W
Optical Drive: LG gsa-h62n
Case: RAIDMAX SMILODON ATX-612WBP (With the door on the front removed for better air flow)
Monitor: 2x 19' Hanns-G LCD
Mouse: Wired Logitech
Keyboard: Wired Microsoft

Firefox constantly crashing

stupidsexyFlanders — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 06:27:43 -0800

Wiped PC, reinstalled XP, now Firefox crashes VERY frequently. I can't get a mozilla version to run stable. Tried 3 and 2, two crashes slightly less often but still at least every half hour. The machine's clean, and AVG is updated and running. Crashes are on loads of random pages (google.com, for instance, or mefi) and cannot be reliably reproduced on specific pages. The browser goes away and the error reporting thing comes up. Any ideas?

What bookmarking sites should a former Ma.gnolia junkie turn to?

ismaelsobek — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 18:08:34 -0800

Who will I turn to after Ma.gnolia? I heart bookmarking. I do not heart computer crashes. After experiencing one huge one, thanks to a faulty Fujitsu hard drive, in which I lost almost all of my data (this was before Time Machine), I decided to move as much of my data off of my laptop as possible.

I went with Ma.gnolia for bookmarks, but, now, Ma.gnolia has crashed. For now, I'm grinding my teeth with Delicious, but I'm looking for a better solution. I don't care much about the "social" aspects, but a nice interface and link sharing are a plus.

oh my should I put my money in a mattress?

borkingchikapa — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 07:29:53 -0800

I'm moving overseas from the US in less than a year, and my stellar powers of observation tell me that there's a good chance the dollar is going to eat shit before then. My savings are <$10,000, what can I do with them to ensure that I'm not cursing the economy when I leave? Is putting it in foreign currency enough, or is there a better option? How do I do that? I know we're probably not talking about anything catastrophic here (though maybe!), but I've had the dollar devalue on me before and it sucks even when it's a fraction of a percent. I have everything in a money market account now, which I like because I'm earning some interest but all of my money is still easily accessible. I'm not looking for some long-term investment solution, I just want to make sure I have roughly the same amount of money I put in there at the end of next year.

Can I fix a scuffed bumper?

floam — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 15:03:45 -0800

Somebody loaned me their car for a week. I managed to ding the bumper. Help me figure out if this is something I can fix myself or if I need to take it to a body shop. Pictures inside. I have scratched/scuffed the paint on the bumper of a burgrandy '91 Camaro. This piece appears to be PVC plastic. What's the best way to make this go away as much as it can without wasting money? A detailing shop here in the Portland area says they can fix it in a few hours by refinishing the bumper for $250, so that is the benchmark.

The car is in average condition and this doesn't need to be wonderful, we just need to get this a bit less immediately noticeable. These aren't particularly great pictures. I'm hoping that by showing how it changes when wet as opposed to dry it can make obvious what kind of damage we're talking about.

Bumper, wet
Bumper, dry

I consider myself capable of doing any sort of repair that you could expect a reasonably intelligent "handy" 21 year old to be capable of. I'm kind of hoping there's some magic way around paint. The 50% of it that disappears just because it's wet gives me hope I can at least help that part. Remember, this is plastic, not metal. At least from some cursory googling it appears I can't buff it out.

How to get even with my damages?

GrooveStix — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 15:36:26 -0800

I was rear ended in Michigan (a no-fault state) last week but I still wasn't guilty. Although I don't have collision coverage with my insurance, I have neck pains and my car has been totaled. What are my options here? My accident seems very simple. I stopped behind 3-4 cars that were waiting for the other lane to clear so they can turn left, but the second I stopped I got rear ended by a SUV!!! I don't understand how they didn't see me stop since I own a tiny sedan, the road was flat and this was during daylight so the 3-4 cars in front of my were definitely visible.

At first I honestly didn't feel the crash that badly, because my car didn't move much because I rear ended the car in front of me but I couldn't believe how much it was damaged when I got out. You can see one picture here.
One of the back doors also won't close, and now I posses a hole in my trunk which obviously also won't close. I did an estimation of the damage today and they tell me that the damage is well over $3400 and the value of the car itself, and it is then when I freaked out - I guess I didn't understand the scope of the damage here, but this is ridiculous. I still have neck pains, and this has happened a week ago.

The cherry on the top came from the insurance company (State Farm) of the person who rear ended me, and they are offering to pay me $500 with the mini-tort treatment to pay for my damages.

Is $500 all I can get? I am ready to fight on this one.

Why does my Macbook keep crashing?

Andy Harwood — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 12:14:28 -0800

I have a 1 year old macbook which keeps freezing for no apparent reason. When it happens a message appears saying I have to restart the computer by holding down the power button. It started happening after I set up a 3G internet connection but I guess that's probably a coincidence. I can't think of anything else that could have caused it. Any ideas?