The Whacked Out Story of My Whacked Out Sony Vaio

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Last Monday, I came home from work and was ready to crank out some music from iTunes on my laptop. Putting on the third movement of Shostakovich's 8th symphony, Vivaldi's "Summer," "Dance of the Knights" from Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet, or something similarly pulse-pouding is really the highlight of my day (that, or taking off my tie). So imagine my dismay when I turn on my computer and get a blue screen of death with the message, "Fatal system error, something, something [insert random number sequence here]." I was grief stricken. Then angry. Angry as hell. Hadn't I purchased this damn laptop less than a year before? Can the damn thing really crap out so quickly?

Well, I figured it might've been a glitch. You know, the sort of thing you can go online and solve yourself pretty quickly. Well, screw me if that was the case. Microsoft's troubleshooting involved loosing everything I'd ever saved onto my hard drive. Shit. "Well," I thought, "Fuck microsoft. But if that's what I have to do..." Then I realized, I didn't even have my reboot software with me. Damn again. So then I hoped that the problem would solve itself. Dumb. Of course it wouldn't solve itself.

Now the weird thing about the whole situation was that, according to Microsoft, the problem stems from newly installed hardware/software. I hadn't installed anything. Quite frankly, the problem still baffles me. I went to work, computer was working fine. I come home, it's dead. Maybe martians came down and screwed with it in the interim, but I doubt it. Even after "solving" the problem, I still don't really understand what the hell went wrong. Maybe I rub my laptop the wrong way, I don't know.

Back to the story. So, a week after the problem surfaces, I finally drag my ass over to Circuit City where I purchased it. They told me they couldn't service it themselves because my warranty was with Sony, not them. But they did refer me to these geeky-looking tech kids. Now the kid they referred me to was your typical computer geek: lanky, pimply, and slightly-awkward (like the teenager that works everywhere on The Simpsons). But I have to hand it to him, he knew what he was talking about (unlike say, me). He started talking all sorts of jargon. His plan of advice was as follows:

1. Do what Microsoft says. (My reaction: "Damn.")
2. Make sure everything is in Safe Mode when you do this (My reaction: "Still damn, but alright, whatever you say.")
3. If that doesn't work, send it to Sony (My reaction: "Double damn.")

But then he said something about taking out the memory and putting it back in place. Since that solution sounded completely ludicrous I almost ignored him, but I asked him how to do that anyway.

So I went home a little dejected. I was hoping I could just take the thing in, they would say, "Alright, we'll just take this in and you can come back tomorrow and it'll be as good as new" (as though all customer service representatives act like characters from "Leave it to Beaver"), and I could leave with a fat smile on my face. But I decided to do that stupid crap with the memory anyway, what the hell! So I take out the screws, pop the memory out of place, and then pop it back in. "Preposterous," I'm thinking, "Why in hell would this do anything?" But mother of mercy, I turn on my computer (fingers tightly crossed), and I'll be damned if that thing didn't work as if nothing had ever happened. I felt like Dr. Frankenstein, "It's alive! Alive!" And it was all thanks to that awkward kid at Circuit City, who gave me the most ridiculous solution I'd ever heard (and something I wouldn't have thought of in a million years) and saved me a bunch of money in the process. I'm thinking of going back there just to give him a big fat man-hug.