# It Worked Yesterday: The Trouble with Intermittent Problems

Some problems have the decency to stay broken. You turn something on, nothing happens, and at least you know you have a problem to find.

Then there are intermittent problems. Those are the ones that make you think you have something fixed, only to prove you wrong the next time you use it.

I’m working on an Acer Aspire laptop that will probably become number 13 in my collection. I haven’t numbered it yet. Perhaps I’m waiting to see whether it deserves a number or a warning label.

I’ve loaded different versions of Linux on it, and the pattern keeps repeating. It boots once just fine. I start thinking I’ve finally found the right combination. Then I boot it again, and it locks up during startup.

That first successful boot gets your hopes up. The next one puts you right back where you started.

One thing I suspect is the memory. I’ve been using RAM marked PC2-6400, and I think this machine may call for PC2-5300. I haven’t established that the memory is causing the trouble. The numbers alone don’t prove it. But compatibility, or a faulty memory module, is something I want to investigate.

It could also be the hard drive. Perhaps there is a bad area on it, or perhaps the drive itself is getting unreliable. Again, that’s a possibility, not a diagnosis.

I have parts on order, including a solid-state drive. I’m hoping that will give the old Acer a little more speed. Whether it cures the boot problem is something I’ll have to find out. A faster computer is welcome, but I’d settle for one that starts reliably.

This sort of trouble isn’t limited to computers. Cars can do the same thing. They hesitate, refuse to start, or make a strange noise—until you take them to the mechanic. Then they behave perfectly.

You find yourself saying, “It really was doing it yesterday.”

The trouble is that a successful test doesn’t necessarily mean a successful repair. Sometimes it only means the problem didn’t show up that time. That makes it easy to give credit to the last thing you changed, even when the real cause is still hiding somewhere else.

I’m trying to remember that with this laptop. Change one thing, try it several times, and keep track of what happens. If I replace everything at once and it starts working, I may be happy, but I won’t know which part made the difference.

There is satisfaction in bringing an old machine back to life. There is also a fair amount of patience involved, especially when the machine keeps offering false encouragement.

For now, the Acer has given me one dependable result: it has supplied a subject for this blog.

I’m hoping that, before long, it will also give me two good boots in a row.

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