Log 2016020201

I'm at the dealership now getting the windshield wipers mechanism fixed and my manual transaxle fluid changed on my 2008 Chevy HHR.  And The Robot is working on 3 of 4 hard disks.  With a 4 disk system, I dedicated one for the operating system (for the most part) and spread the other apps, documents and saved files to the other three.  I have an inventory of what I use and I try to make sure that applications are installed in such a way that it's unlikely that two of them that are likely to be  used at the same time aren't on the same hard disk.  But the more parts in the machine, the more that there is that can go wrong.

Last night, I installed my graphics firmware.  It came up and asked me to accept an ultra high resolution that it recommended.  I should have known that it was too much for my cheap monitor, but I accepted it anyways.  Well, it didn't give me a 15 second countdown and the changes saved.  Now, all I get is a black screen and the operating systems "low resolution" mode won't work either.  I now have to reinstall the operating system, but the good news is that it does that quickly.

On three hard disks, it's just enough run Google Earth under my system.  That was the goal.  As far as the fourth drive... my system uses a RAID expansion card.  This card adds 3 more hard disk ports to the motherboard.  Historically, they have been always difficult to configure.  Right now, I can see tow problems.  One is that when I had two hard disks plugged into it, they were both set to "active" status.  I don't know too much about these cards, but if they both were, maybe it was confused upon start up (the computer freezes before windows while trying to initialize the RAID).  The other thing is that maybe this card is bad?  This system has been kinda dry in the past and it has taken some static shock.  I changed a few pieces of hardware since then, but I'm not sure if I did the RAID yet?

And then maybe I just don't know how to configure it and this is all my fault?  But I'm getting tired of this. My problem solving skills are wearing down and I just want this to be fixed... now.