Vista hanging on crcdisk.sys
So - after an extended period of it having been sat in our conservatory, with temperatures ranging from -5C to +35C, I booted up my venerable Vista PC. It hung.
Damn.
Tried safe mode, and the boot started - but hung when it tried to load a file called crcdisk.sys. Googling revealed likely hardware problems, but nothing really specific - some people found disabling the built-in wifi helped. This PC doesn't have built-in wifi.
One thing that did crop up was that all the problems relating to this file appeared after the application of a Windows Update patch from Microsoft; and sure enough, pretty much the last thing I did last time the PC was on was run Windows Update. So I did the natural thing, cursed Microsoft again and downloaded the latest Ubuntu.
Except that didn't boot either.
This was getting annoying. I wanted to use the PC as a development server, and there it was, an electricity-sucking paperweight.
However - one thing that the Ubuntu installer does have is a menu option to run memtest86. This is a program that, as the name suggest, tests your memory. I ran that, and the screen immediately turned to a sea of red. My thoughts returned to the somewhat extreme temperature variations, and how likely that repeated expansion and shrinkage was to unseat some memory.
memtest86 is now happily running as we speak with no failures, now I've removed and re-seated all the memory. So I owe Microsoft an apology - this time, I don't think it was Vista.
I might still install Ubuntu on it though.
I've disabled comments for now due to spam problems - I'll turn them back on when I've fixed it!
