I have been connected to the “internet” for so long that I often forget life before Google (or HotBot or AltaVista or whatever). I feel I’ve become careless because I know that everything can be solved by Googling it. It’s a crutch, and I know it.
Well today wasn’t a case of carelessness, it was a case of an upgrade gone awry. Last week I added a stick of memory to my aging PC to give it at least another year of shelf life. I consider myself rather PC/Tech savvy — I built my current PC from scratch, so I know a little bit of how this works. I figured this was a no-brained upgrade. Sometimes, however, errors and problems crop up whose causes are unknown. By some weird cosmic combination of components and mismatched parts, Windows seems to go crazy and begins corrupting itself in some self-preserving, self-destruct mode. At first, it seems harmless. A simple BSOD pops up. Then an occasional reboot that happens out of the blue (no pun intended). Then things get wonky. This time around, I get an error message, on boot-up, along the lines of:
lsass.exe — system error indicates a revision number encountered or specified is not one known by the service. It may be a more recent revision than the service is aware of.
Huh? I swear I never touched lsass.exe! I’ve never even heard of it! Nevertheless this rendered my PC completely unbootable. After trying everything, I went to Google, looking for guidance. (Thank goodness for the laptop!) The nugget of wisdom that Google bestowed upon me came in the form of this site.
The steps were followed, windows was fixed and I was playing Guild Wars by 8:30. I could go on a rant and say how wonderful consoles are because when they crash (if they ever crash) a simple hard reboot fixes the problem 99.98% of the time. But I won’t, because my consoles don’t have 2+ years of baby pictures and movies. Or 4+ years of emails and contacts. I wasn’t so desperate that I was ready to wipe everything but I was close. Thanks to Google problems were solved and I have once again regained my throne of technical superiority in the eyes of those who care (mainly my wife).
Man it feels good to be a PC-fixing super hero. Now let’s see what happens when I put that memory stick back in…
Update: As Bobster noted in the comments, the problem was my Kensington Memory Stick being incompatible with Dual Channel Operation. Whether it some how corrupted data on my hard drive is unknown, I blame it completely for all my hassle.
So I’ve taken this as an opportunity to do a fresh XP install, clean out all the gunk and get back to a streamlined installation. Guild Wars is gonna fly now!
I liked being the PC man around the house at one point, but then it gets tiresome when you get the same question from the same person many, many times.
Our DSL modem croaked late Friday evening and we weren’t back online until late Saturday afternoon, and my wife and I both went into serious withdrawal. I’d go down to check email and just sit in front of the blank modem feeling so helpless:) It’s a weird feeling, for sure!
“What’s that lsass.exe? Little Timmy’s fallen down the old abandoned mineshaft and twisted his ankle?”
Be sure not to tell your wife why the computer had problems to begin with. That would totally blow your secret identity!
(The memory stick he bought was not compatible with his system. Not his fault. I mean, how was he to know? The manufacturer hid it on the front of the package. “NOT FOR USE WITH ‘YOUR’ COMPUTER! YOU’LL BE SORRY!” it said. What kind of super hero would read a package.)
P.S. I swear I never touched lsass either. I don’t care what the video tape shows!
P.S.S. Thank goodness I didn’t have to play Guild Wars alone.