Don't scare me like that, Ayato!

There is no Kim content in this post. Except for that sentence.

My computer is Ayato. I name them after giant robot pilots. The last was Kaworu and the one before that Quatre. I'm going to have to watch some more anime before I get the next one, hopefully years from now. I'm all out of names I like.

Ayato freaked me well and good tonight. I turned him (ok, it, but it's strange to use a proper name and then default to a neuter personal pronoun) on and logged into my City of Heroes account. I played with some friends for a while, until I froze up. This happens sometimes in CoH. It was a pretty hard freeze and took all Ayato down. I was able to get out of the game, but not reload the desktop. The power button didn't respond. So I cut power at the surge protector.

Then I waited about thirty seconds and rebooted. All's well. I log back in and two minutes later the same thing happens while I'm trying to use the auction house. Annoying. I decide I'm done with CoH for the night. I reboot again and get into the Windows loading screen where it hangs. The drives are making the same sweeping sound I got in CoH. Oh boy.

I turned it back off and let it sit for a half hour. This time I got so far as the screen right after the BIOS screen. It tells me it's loading the PBR (Partition Boot Record, I think) and then says it's done. Nothing happens. This screen has always gone by so fast before I couldn't really read it. This time it sits. Same drive noise. Tried again. Same. I tried to boot from the Windows reinstall CD Dell gave me. Nope.

Ayato is a paperweight. I tried one more time and went to take a shower while it loaded. I came back 10 minutes later and it's on the log-in screen. Everything is fine now.

Don't do that again, Ayato. I know where you live.