There are two kinds of computer problems:


  1. Those that you understand why they happen, and so possibly know how to fix.

  2. Those that should not happen in a rational world.


An unreadable hard drive.
When I have problems with my own computer, they often start out in the second category, and move to the first as I gather more information about them. For example, the picture on the right shows the output of my laptop when I booted it from hibernation a few days ago. Instead of restoring the contents of my RAM from where they were stored on my hard drive, the computer was unable to read from my hard drive. Since I had put the computer into hibernation just a few seconds before, I was a bit surprised. While I know that hard drives can fail at any time, I always assumed that I would have some warning - either the inability to access some files or the infamous "click of death." Once the surprise disappeared (along with some nervous laughter), I was fine. When I rebooted the computer, the hard drive worked normally.