blue screen of death | Captsavage's Blog

This is what I felt like doing on Sunday night, I just couldn’t find a bit of branch to whip my car with.

I have a new car, you know that lovely shiny new Volkswagen Golf that I picked up the other day. Well on the weekend I thought I would take it for a spin to a mates place to show it off. He has one too, but mine is just a little bit more special than his… Well at least I think it is…

Here is my new baby

Isn’t she lovely, btw all my cars are girls…

So what has you so upset with her Capt?

Well my darling daughter rang me up just as I was about to get home from my trip. So I thought I’d talk to her on my hands free in the car, rather than calling her back when I got home… So we had a lovely little chat about things, talked about her impending visit with her two brothers, and how she is going at school. Then I hung up and did what you normally do when you want to drive off, I turned the key and tried to start the car…

Nothing happened, well apart from it briefly coughing a bit, then promptly stopping…

I tried again, cough cough, then nothing…

I was starting to get a bit frustrated, there was plenty of diesel in the tank, the battery seemed ok, and it had just driven 50 odd kilometres, not a problem at all.

So I took stock of things, thought maybe I was doing it wrong, not holding my tongue in the right direction, I crossed my fingers and gave it one my go… Cough Cough and nothing. I also noticed this funny error message on one of the displays in the car, ‘Key not recognised’, sounded funny as it was the key I had been using all day.

So I resorted to reading the manual, I was getting pretty irritated by now, no explanation of this error message. Then I decided I’d take the key out of the ignition, call for help, and wait outside the car.

Well no, my car was having none of that, it wouldn’t let me take the key out of the ignition…

AARGH!!!! The last straw… I was starting to fall out of love with my new mistress (my VW).

This was me… Except my teeth aren’t nearly this well looked after.

So I sat locked in my car, waiting for the roadside mechanic to come and fix the car… 20 or so minutes later a cheery chap for the local roadside assist company (NRMA) turned up to see what the problem was…

He listened to my tale of woe and first off said the obvious, “you haven’t had this car very long, have you”…

I replied, “well no, just a couple of weeks”.

Then he informed me, “Well you should have asked someone how to operate it before you drove it out of the showroom”.

I said, “it’s a car, I can drive already”.

But he said in a soothing voice, “this is a Volkswagen, it’s not just a regular car”.

Here is the NRMA van… Or one very similar

“well ok” I said “what should I have asked about”

He then pointed out that to remove the key you must have the car in Park (gear)… Otherwise it won’t let you (take the key out)…

Bloody Germans, they make their cars so safe, that we aren’t allowed to do anything dangerous, even if we wanted to. You see I already know that the gearbox won’t let me change gears except when its safe to. It turns on the wipers automatically, it self-parks, it beeps numerous warning sounds when I don’t put on my seat belt or lots of other things.

You’d think they actually won the war by all the bloody rules they have (look out I’m going to cop it from my ancestors for that one).

“So” I asked him “why won’t my car start?”

“I’ve no idea mate” he replied “you have to be a bloody computer guru to understand one of these cars”

“So what do I do then?” I asked rather frustrated

“You do what you do to any misbehaving computer” he laughed “you reboot it”

So the mechanic opened the bonnet, unattached the battery leads, waited for a minute or so. Then he reattached the battery, and amazing, the car started first go…

There is the battery box on the right of the motor at the back

He then told me that since I had rebooted, without saving my data, all the cars settings had reset themselves to the factory defaults… And before I could ask, he told me that since its a car there is no way to save the settings, it’s just too bad…

“Damn” I said “and I had just put in all of the radio stations… another wasted night reprogramming everything.”

I turned to the guy and said “Since when to Microsoft start making cars?”

“Yeah” he replied “you just got the blue screen of death, I suppose, except there is no computer screen”

The dreaded ‘Blue Screen of Death”, I used to have this kind of issue all the time with my Windows 95 computer, I just never thought I’d have it with my car…