|
| Posted on 4/26/08 at 10:43 AM | |
|
|
I just had my desktop in pieces this week. I do all of my work from my laptop, so it wasn't that big of a deal as far as production is concerned... Except, my flatbed scanner is SCSI, and I have it connected to the desktop...which is networked to my laptop. I use the desktop to store extra files, scan images, etc. It's really just a big thing taking up space, keeping me from having to buy another external hdd & a new usb scanner. However........ IT STOPPED FUNCTIONING!! ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh It kept freezing, with the ONLY solution being a hard shutdown & restart. ACK...MY HARDDRIVE....I see visions of the post hurricane Katrina hdd loss & data recovery bills from Gillware!!!!!!! So, then it starts acting hinky about booting. It either freezes on startup during the windows screen, or it can't make it into safe mode...freezes during the driver loading process. So I open it up...pull the hdd and hold it up to my ear... Let's try again... It's spinning... No ugly "bonk" or "boop" or any of those other terrible things I've heard in the past when one is fried. Whew! Okay...hours & hours of trying to find something that it will boot from.... The 1.44 FLOPPY diskettes that came with it will ONLY do a destructive recovery. No other options. ARE YOU KIDDING ME???? You can't just boot from these things... So finally I grab the cd that came with my husband's new laptop. Throw it in there, cross my fingers.... it boots.. hooray.. I'm dancing.. what? something about CMOS and time not matching? What do you mean it's the year 1999? Oh...that can't be good. and what's this? oh...it locked up again... that's not nice. Research... research... okay, so the little CMOS battery needs to be changed...that's like a $4.00 trip to Walmart... again I celebrate... HOORAY!! I've got the battery now... BTW, I'd like to personally beat up every one of the people who had any part of designing the boxes for HP computers, because they are TOO TIGHT!!! What kind of midget handed people do they hire to assemble these things????? Okay, battery in... Let's roll! hmm... no boot... Okay, so maybe the CMOS is permanently fried from the having a dead battery in there... Let's boot with that laptop cd again. Booting... got it... We're cooking with Crisco... Did I mention that I have 7 jobs with SIGNATURES and the customers are BREATHING DOWN MY NECK about their art???? "When is that Class of 2008 design going to be ready?" AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH I can't scan it in!!! The art is complete, I just can't add your stinking signatures!!! Okay, so here is the plan.. I'm gonna download all of my data to my little external hdd and do a recovery on this thing..... or...maybe ...NOT AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH someone shoot me it froze again!! Okay, so I'm fairly certain it's a power problem... research research... Yes!! someone else has had this problem before... replaced the power supply, and his computer is as good as new. So I take the power supply out (which requires all sorts of fun things, like removing the OTHER side cover, and a funky front cover.....dismounting the cd/rw and the dvd player...etc....) and I give it a nice blasting with the ol' canned air... I'm thinking, maybe I can clean it back into working??? yeah right... Try again, with the tower in 15 pieces on my desk...still not working. So...$40 for a new power supply? ummm NO It's time to dump the old desktop, get an external hdd conversion kit, purchase a usb scanner and call it a day. Did I mention the DVD burner just stopped working in my laptop? AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH Who is buying the first round???? I'm already on the barstool. ____________________ Angie Davis currently Ad Specialty Company/Artist http://www.angiedavisgraphics.com formerly Freelance Screenprinting Computer Graphics Artist of 15 years | |
  
|
What is it?? Is something in the air?? by