Chomper Stomping

After boxing up my old computer and sending it off to Dell, I began playing Half Life 2: Episode 1.

The third day I went to play it, It started crashing. It would crash every time I played after playing for 60 seconds.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So I went in search of the answer hoping beyond hope that it was a simple driver update.

I did all of the windows updates, downloaded the latest DirectX drivers, and downloaded the Steam Crash Client. The steam crash client was very helpful in that it told me that I had a VERY SEVERE problem with my video card drivers, and gave me a link to download the new ones (I was using v.6.14.1… and the current ones as of 8/21/06 were 8.282). Let’s hope this isn’t an evil trap by Vadar to lure me in, and that this will actually work.

After installing all drivers and updating windows, the game seems to be working fine…

Some of you may have heard about my Dell Wars saga to date. But if you have not, I will sum it up here:

Dell sent me a lemon.

Episode I – The Phantom Menace:

I get the Dell. It”s stats are off the chart. I am astounded. Yet there are some foreboding signs I ignore lurking in the shadows. My computer freezes randomly sometimes…

Episode II – Attack of the Cloning Sounds:

While playing HL2:E1 the computer begins crashing with looping sounds. Whaaaaa??? Dell sends me a new video card, and I put a new sound card in it and disable the on-board sound.

Episode III – Revenge of the System Board:

While playing WOW my Dell starts crashing and giving me “Blue Screens of Death”. I calmly call dell and scream at them, and they tell me it is the ram and system board. Oh and the processor. And they come and replace it. The RAM goes bad, and they send me new RAM. Then the system board goes bad AGAIN… All seems lost. I rise up screaming “NOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!”

This brings us current with:

Episode IV: A New XPS 410

My old computer (An XPS400) has gone over to the dark side of the force. However after a year of dealing with my darth dell computer, A new (free) XPS 410 has just arrived in it’s place. Could this new hope be the answer to all my problems? Will it play HL2:E1 without crashing even at full resolution and max fps? Will I counter strike with impunity? We shall soon find out (I just took it out of the box)…

Stay tuned. Hopefully there will be no Episode V in which the evil dellpire strikes back and turns out to have sent me another hopelessly crappy computer…