may have fixed a computer problem

For both of the operating system upgrades in the past year, I've had problems with the main computer. Recently, I've also noticed other problems (mostly that my .epub program, Calibre, wouldn't load). I decided to try a reinstall of the operating system again, but this time, I would buy the disks from On-Disk, seller of many CD's & DVD's, mostly freeware or inexpensive utilities, which they make up for the cost of the disks an many cases. I'd had problems burning my own and thought that this would solve the problem.

The disks came (I bought one for Fedora 16 and one, just in case, for Ubuntu 11.10). When they came, they both appeared to have errors... drat! But the Fedora disk has a memory-check-at bootup facility on it, so, just for ha-ha's, I ran that... and came up with hundreds of errors.

Huh?

I did a quick web search to find out how many errors were normal, and the number quickly came back: none. It seemed my memory was, in the words of a memorable Dixie-ite of my acquaintance, "low sick". Replacement memory was about $40 shipped, and came quick from Newegg. I popped it in, and the memory check facility showed no errors. Yay!

So between last night & today, I backed up everything and completely reinstalled the operating system (Fedora 16 again). The install went smoothly; the hard parts were the backup (I back up to three places, because I HATE losing stuff) and then resetting all the programs and utilities. Getting a computer set the way I like it takes hours: reinstalling all the keyboard shortcuts and macros, putting in all the special directories I save to, setting up the backup facilities... I'm mostly done, but I expect I'll find a dozen or so little things to do over the next few days.

Still, it's a great relief to find the (probable) solution to a number of things that have been wrong with this computer (other than the PEBKAC ones), and to have it fixed so inexpensively. Poor memory explains so many things that have been wrong - I wish I'd thought of it sooner.