Which is one of the reasons that blogging is light. I ordered a new motherboard that arrived today. It was the same as the one that failed (only thirty-six bucks plus shipping), so I figured it would be a painless swap.

Almost. It loads Windows, and then prompts me for name and password. Shortly thereafter, it bluescreens with a bunch of hex and a message:

DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL

The problem is with a file called portcls.sys

I tried reinstalling Windows, to no avail. I cannot get the system up. Does anyone have any theories? I’m wondering if it’s a memory problem, but I don’t have any spares of that type to test with.

[Update at 5 PM EDT]

Never mind.

I found the problem. It was some new audio de-vice on this version of the board, that I apparently installed the wrong driver for. I uninstalled it in safe mode, and got the machine up.

I should add that one of the things that added to this joyful computer experience was a relatively new keyboard on which the F8 key didn’t work…