Heather woke me up this morning to tell me that the computer was beeping incessantly and that the image had disappeared from the monitor. This is not how I like to start my morning.
In any case, I thought the problem might be related to our KVM switch. I have a Linux machine (hosting this blog) and a Windows machine in our computer desk and I use a KVM switch to share the keyboard, mouse, and monitor between the two computers. It’s really convenient most of the time, but every so often, it flakes out and has to be reset. So, I tried that (which involves unplugging it from both computers, since it draws power from the computers’ PS/2 ports), but it didn’t help. Then, I cut the KVM switch out of the equation and plugged the keyboard, mouse and monitor directly into the still incessantly beeping computer. This solved the problem of the blank monitor. Unfortunately, the monitor now showed me that my machine was hopelessly locked up.