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Did my bass kill my computer?

Forty-Thirty

Forty-Thirty

Guest
Feb 22, 2015
399
1,208
Arkansas
#1
Hi everyone! I'm new here (I said hello last week on the "New Member Intros" forum), and just bought my very first amp tonight. As a newbie, I know close to nothing about equipment, so I apologize in advance if this is a silly question.

When I got the amp home, I immediately hooked it up and started playing (so exciting!!). Toward the end of my practice session, I put one of those play along tab videos on YouTube on my computer and fiddled around a bit. I was halfway through a song when my computer FLIPPED THE HECK OUT. The screen froze and the audio was an unintelligible mess. Then I got the blue screen of death. I thought perhaps that was a sign that it was time to put the guitar away, and tried to recover the computer.

I'm wondering if somehow my bass and amp being right near my computer created too strong an electromagnetic field and messed my computer up. Have any of you had this problem, or do any of you know if this can happen? With the plethora of play along tab videos out there, I'm assuming people really do play along with them--this system wouldn't work if everyone's computers wigged out every time. Thanks for your help!
 
#3
smeet said:
I don't think it's likely that your bass/amp had anything to do with the blue screen. Even if it did, magnetic fields drop off very quickly with distance, so unless you had it jammed right up next to your computer, it's even more unlikely...
Click to expand...

Interesting. The amp was about a foot away from the computer, and I was standing right in front of it while I was playing. It could have been just a fluke, but this computer has never done anything like it before in the years I have owned it.
 
#8
ddnidd1 said:
Coincidence doesn't correlate with causation.
Click to expand...

For sure. I'm a science professor and I literally have my students chant "correlation is not causation" in class. It was a very strange coincidence, though, and I just wonder. It's the kind of thing I don't want to test in multiple trials, in case I kill the computer for good! ;) I think the "shaking something loose" explanation might work.
 
#12
If they were close together, I guess they were on the same power circuit within your house. It's possible (though not likely) that the amp generated a surge on the PC's power socket.

I've personally seen defective house wiring fry an effects pedal straight after a light bulb blew.
 
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#16
If your getting a blue screen its a driver issue or hardware issue. Did you install any new devices on the computer? Did you upgrade your RAM recently? Update any drivers recently? Checking the Event viewer logs will help you narrow down what caused it. Unless your amp plugs into your computer it will not cause a blue screen
 
#18
JC87 said:
If your getting a blue screen its a driver issue or hardware issue. Did you install any new devices on the computer? Did you upgrade your RAM recently? Update any drivers recently? Checking the Event viewer logs will help you narrow down what caused it. Unless your amp plugs into your computer it will not cause a blue screen
Click to expand...

Poorly written apps that fail to clean up memory can also cause stop errors (BSOD)... Any newly installed / updated applications could be at fault. Check them out as well...
 

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