purchase.date<\/code>. It’s a text file, one that I save in my home directory. The file contains the date I first turned on the computer, and set up everything. I keep that date because I know that computers, over time, die. The longer you have a computer, the better the odds it’s going to screw up.<\/p>\nGenerally speaking, 5 years is a good run for a PC. I’ve used them longer, but not comfortably. When a PC hits 6 or 7 years, then I’m backing up more frequently and saving more often. According to the purchase.date<\/code> file on my PC, I first set it up on April 5, 2008. That means it’s hit the 5 year mark.<\/p>\nAnother indicator of computer trouble is change, a mantra I repeat over and over again in my Troubleshooting<\/em> books. So I got to thinking about what’s changed?<\/p>\nA Windows update happened earlier in the month. Included in that update was an update to the PC’s NVIDIA graphics adapter. That could be the problem, seeing how it was the display that went dark; the rest of the PC seemed to work okay.<\/p>\n
One way to discover whether the graphics adapter driver (software) is goofing off or not is to start the PC in Safe Mode. If the computer can sit there for a while and doesn’t crash, the problem is usually a driver. Rather than do that, which takes forever, I set up a program on the screen that beeped when I pressed a certain key.<\/p>\n
After a while, the screen went dark. I pressed the key. BEEP<\/em>. So it was the graphics driver update that was causing the problem. That was a guess, of course, but a pretty good one.<\/p>\nTo fix the bad driver, I had to “roll it back.” You can do that by accessing the graphics adapter’s Properties dialog box from the Device Manager window. (Detailed directions are found in my Troubleshooting<\/em> books.) Click the Roll Back Driver button and — presto<\/em>! — the old, reliable driver is once again installed.<\/p>\n
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