Re: Nothing Is Worth Dying For
- From: Rumpelstiltskin <PleaseDoNotReplyByEmail@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 15 Oct 2005 05:15:57 GMT
On 14 Oct 2005 17:15:35 -0700, "Benjamin Franklin"
<schai99@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>What operating system are you using? Windows98 flakes out after a few
>years and becomes unstable unless it is reinstalled. XP stands for
>extra poopy, supposedly built on an NT core for stability, it wraps
>that core with useless crap that is the equivalent to dipping a golden
>apple in dog shit, and I'm being kind here.
>
>If reinstalling drivers makes your gear work, then your hardware is
>okay, it's either the application program that uses the hardware that
>has a problem or the operating system that interfaces the hardware to
>the application software.
>
>Check the control panel for little yellow question marks in the system
>icon/device manager. Right click on any question marks and select the
>driver tab, it will show you if your driver is being recognised and
>installed properly. If the problem keeps recurring your registry may
>have become corrupt or you could have a spyware/ trojan/virus problem.
>
>Easiest bet, backup what you want ot save, to cd or dvd. Then reformat
>your hard drive and reinstall everything you want to use. There are
>several good backup utilties available and XP does offer restore
>points, which will allow you to go back to an earlier, hopefully more
>stable, environment. Note if you want to use restore points, don't do
>the reformat as it will wipe your disk clean (more or less) and will
>definetly destroy your restore points.
>
>If this is over your head, by all means buy a new computer, but I'd
>stay away from e-machines. Do a google search on them they have a
>rather checkered history to put it mildly.
I'm using XP. Computers are always over my head. I got my
web access back, it seems, finally, due to a tech who had me
zap my identity and then re-input it, which none of the two or
three previous techs had suggested. Maybe I should have
done that myself, but I was afraid I might not be able to get
anything back.
I don't use backup utilities. I personally don't want to back
up to a 20-DVD set that's useless if anything goes wrong with
the first DVD, and from which I can't retrieve an individual
item easily. I backed up the really crucial stuff on labeled
individual DVDs, then for good measure copied all the folders
on my C drive to a partition on my auxiliary drive, after clearing
the partition to receive them.
I still have no sound, though. One tech suggested trying a
new sound card, which I guess I should do, though that seems
unlikely to solve the problem since the sound went out exactly
after I tried to install the Garritan. More than the sound is
wrong, since I'm not seeing the instrument patches in my
writing program as I'm supposed to do. I'll have to log into
Garritan, since I was able to register when my modem got
working. Maybe the guy who wrote how to see the Garritan
waveset using my writing program will have some ideas.
I tried the system restore early on but it didn't get rid of the
problems. I can't do it anymore, since the latest windows
update, which I did early last week, killed off all the restores
before that date. I do like the system restore-function: It's
gotten me out of trouble a couple of times.
I backed up everything with the intention of reinstalling
and resetting the *&%^#$! registry back to its factory condition,
only to find that the reinstall disk wouldn't proceed because I
"have a new version of windows". I don't: I only kept up with
the security updates. I bitched about the registry to a friend
who's a geek with godlike powers. He said he didn't know
why Microsoft went with a registry. It really screws things up,
IMO, for the same reason whales haven't been able to get rid
of the bones for their back legs: the genes are so mixed up
that any change means tweaking a whole bunch of other
stuff that's all over the place, and that often affects a lot of
other things. My friend mentioned that the registry is a
substitute for the "inf" files that used to set switches for
applications, but those were in the same folder as the
application and were in text, so you could edit them easily,
or delete applications without touching other applications.
You didn't have the risk of screwing up the entire computer
if anything went wrong with any application. The stock
reason is to avoid duplicating code, but I don't buy that since
it's a pretty trivial justification considering how much more
arcane it makes things. My dark suspicion is that Microsoft
did it just to make things difficult for any competition.
(Unfortunately my friend lives in San Diego now, though I
wouldn't be comfortable asking him to help me out even if
he still lived here, since he makes big bucks for the kind of
mess I'd be asking him to look into for free.)
I mentioned to my friend that he should come up and
visit, since he says he's always regretted leaving San
Francisco, instead of just eating cheesy poufs and
geeking around with his computers all day, but he corrected
me that he ate lasagna, not cheesy poufs. Most all his
clients are down that way, so it seemed like a sensible
move, and he was born down there, but he'd
underestimated how desolate the rest of the country would
seem after having once lived in San Francisco, something
like Ovid's exile from Rome, perhaps.
I'd have to buy Windows to do a full reformat, since all
I got with my computer was the reinstall disk that came
with the computer, plus the usual sixth-grade manual.
Actually, sixth-graders these days would probably be OK
if they had a decent manual.
Even if I got Windows though, I wouldn't be able to put
back the non-windows stuff that's on the Dell reinstall disk
after I reformatted. I guess I could ask Dell what version
number of XP I should install to get the reinstall disk to work,
but I don't feel like going through another series of phone
calls, each taking five minutes just to get past the menu
system full of options and advertisements "for my
convenience", after which I might get a message saying
the help desk was swamped followed by "Please call later"
and a hangup.
And on top of that, I was sneezing Monday and Tuesday.
I had flu or a really bad cold on Wednesday, which kept
me at home and mostly in bed. I used the time to finish
backing everything up quicker than I otherwise would have
done, though, so that did have a silver lining.
It's been a great couple of weeks for kvetching. I
managed to be polite and calm in the help calls, even
thanking people whom I thought didn't know much more
than how to read the printed instructions they were given,
and just led me through the same stuff I'd already tried
myself repeatedly.
>>I always have unusual problems. I don't fit into this world
>>well. The stuff I want is often not made, though it could be
>>made, and the stuff that's made is often of little interest to
>>me. I couldn't care less about being able to play movies or
>>Brave-New-World type video games on my computer.
>>The credit-card companies that offer cool stuff for $5 if you
>>gain enough credits have never offered anything I'd even
>>want to have around, because having it wouldn't be worth
>>the effort of dusting it off occasionally to me.
>
>Amen.
.
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