Tuesday, May 10, 2005

MY .DLL IS BROKEN!

My computer was loading like molasses this morning, 10 minutes had passed and it had still not completely loaded.  This was not the first time and I knew that any commands I might try to execute would only slow the process down more, assuming of course that there is a speed slower than 'stop'.  I'm the human here, I can play the waiting game.  I got up and went to refresh my cup of coffee.  When I returned I found my daughter in my chair infront of the computer, banging on the keyboard. 

'Don't touch the keyboard!' I warned but it was too late.

'Its frozen' she diagnosed with a smile that reflected the pride she felt for knowing what the problem was.  Unfortunately her diagnostic tests just added 50 more actions to the long list of commands waiting to be executed by the great black sloth. The only thing I could do at this point now was to shut down and restart.  Grrrrrrrreat, that should take another 20 minutes!

It does, and all the while the Wizard of Odds is against me.  He stands in a little room behind my monitor, flashing up little windows that read 'run error' and '.dll failed'.  I could almost hear his manical laugh.  'If you shut down now you will lose any unsaved information' he warned repeatedly across my screen.  I just click the [end now] box.

So how did I come to this, a failure in .dll 101?  I didn't do anything different, I hadn't deleted any files.  I pushed the same button, the one that said [POWER], but some days, after many days of smooth computing, just out of the blue, almost randomly, POOF!  Runtime error!  All it takes is one byte to load in the wrong order, or to miss completely, and the whole system becomes unstable.  And there is nothing I can do from this side of the keyboard to fix it.  There is no 'As Seen On TV' miracle button or key to hit that will magically cause the computer to suddenly correct and load properly.  Trust me, I've tried every button and every key, and I've tried hitting everything from every angle imaginable with the same results... Nada!  Not a thing! 

Perhaps my computer has a re-occuring virus from a byte of some sort.  Perhaps something somewhere got deleted or misplaced.  Or, more likely, perhaps this is just too much technology for someone as techno-illerate as me.  But thats okay, I can work around it.  After 30 minutes I was able to restart my computer without incident.  I passed the test, all of my .dlls have loaded.  I am back in business, hmmmm.... I wonder what can I unintentionally delete this time?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Mine old computer used to do this all the time. I had 98SE on it. Go here and run their full tests. You do not have to register. http://www1.pcpitstop.com/default.asp

Anonymous said...

Hey BooBoo: I don't suppose ya' clean it every now and again, do ya?  LMAO...I have a nifty little maintenance folder that I run every day when I sit down, and my WinME runs like a top! If I don't do it, the longer it stays on, the more unstable it becomes.  Holler my way if you'd like to try it.

*You crack me up, I swear...

xoxoxo,
andi

Anonymous said...

mine is not working right either!
marti