Lately my computer has been freezing up...requiring a hard boot. I defragged, cleaned my drive, ran a virus check on the whole system. Nada. It started in LOTRO and then moved to when I was trying to do more than one thing even when not playing. Then I got the dreaded BSOD, with a video driver error.
I updated my video driver and its seemed to go away - or not. Crap.
I did some reading and the errors seemed to be identical to some that happened when the video card was new out (way back in 2007). Updating the driver worked then. It also seemed identical to an issue someone else on LOTRO was having earlier this month - so it could have been LOTRO related, but the issue for both of us also happened outside of LOTRO. The suggestion was a corrupted file in LOTRO, requiring an uninstall and complete reinstall of LOTRO (Think 24 hours and a blown out download limit given I don't have the DVDs). The last suggestion was a BIOS issue - out of date for driver or corrupt file. Solution - update the BIOS of the motherboard.
I didn't want to reinstall LOTRO for a guess, so I started reading up on BIOS updating. They tell you how to do it with many dire "unless you know what you are doing don't do this or you'll turn your computer into a brick" warnings. I still preferred this to reinstalling LOTRO.
So this morning I pulled out my files to identify exactly what my motherboard was - go to your manufacturer and get the updated bios for exactly your board, do not try to get it anywhere else or computer death will ensue etc etc.
My motherboard book pointed out I have software on my CD to A - update the bios and B - monitor voltage and core temperature (which I've always wanted to do). Utilities now downloaded I got the update software to save a copy of the current BIOS to a CD and then got it to find the company site, select the available BIOS's and then I picked the most recent one and told the software to flash install - so no effort on my part. Apparently theres also instructions for laborious, careful DOS installing if it doesn't work.
Then the software told me to reboot...ok....why isn't anything turning up on the screen. Crap.
Hard reboot. Now something pops up Checksum error press 1 to fix - takes me to bios altering zone. Crap some more.
Decided to make no changes and just reboot again. Turned on fine. The cold sweat of fear starts to dry. So far no freezes, but I haven't done anything intensive yet. I have a vague suspicion that when I made no changes, the BIOS may have reverted to the previous default state and my computer will continue to crash and burn when Bindy fights a boss.
BTW Sorry about the other week guys - the guardian abandoning everyone just at the start of the "OK, I'll hold off the big boss with 26 000 HP" fight.
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