Hmmm.

I think my computer overheard me talking about Operation Cracktop, because ever since then, it’s been randomly crashing. This is not good! I don’t know if my hard drive is going out or if my RAM (which I already know is wonky) is getting even wonkier. My plan is to give this machine to my mom when I’m done with it. I’m hoping that replacing (and upgrading) the RAM and installing a new hard drive, as well as reinstalling a clean copy of XP, will fix whatever is wrong with it. I’m not about to start on that project, though, until I have Mr. Cracktop in my greedy little hands and have got him properly set up.

Hrmf.

The other thing that has occurred to me is that the problem may be with Windows Media Player. I don’t use it for anything, but the crashes have all happened when other programs were/could have been interacting with it. It first happened when I was trying to use Amazon’s music downloader, which I know uses WMP. Then, it happened while trying to use QuickTime (which I loathe, so uninstalled, hoping that would solve the problem, but alas, no).

Thinking back, though, the problem started after installing QuickTime, so I have a feeling that’s the culprit, and that it’s overstepped its bounds and corrupted something that WMP required. I ran into the same problem with iTunes a few years ago, and ended up having to uninstall a bunch of programs, uninstall iTunes, then reinstall the affected programs again. Apple knew there was a problem with that release of iTunes, but did not fix it until 2-3 iterations later. Bastards. I wouldn’t be surprised if a similar problem was going on with QuickTime.