It would appear that my trusty, 7-year old Toshiba Satellite laptop is finally starting to show signs of imminent death.

For several days now every time I shut down, I get a blue screen error and the laptop never actually powers off.  Then this afternoon, all of a sudden, my wireless stops working altogether.

I’ve been very, very satisfied with my Toshiba.  Last year I bought a new battery and fan assembly for it, as both were done.  Aside from that, it’s been quite reliable.

So now I’m trying to squeak out another 6 months out of her at least.  After 4 months of not working and spending $15K on an IFR rating, I’m in no position to outlay $3000 for the Macbook Pro of my dreams.

I’ll be using the next couple of days to wipe the drive and re-install everything.  I’m hoping these issues are just related to a corrupt O/S and not actual hardware failures… even  though I wiped and re-installed less than a year ago.

Guess we’re gonna find out soon enough!

Wish me luck.

[UPDATE: Mar. 12, 2010]

Well it looks like all is well again with my laptop.  The errors have disappeared and I’ve got nearly everything I need back on it.  And, after many re-installs in my life, it appears as though my checklists and install lists helped immensely. [/UPDATE]