Woe is me.
1. Oh god almighty. I think my computer and/or external hard drive is dying on me. I'm not sure what's happening, but it's behaving super weirdly and ARGH. I can't tell WHERE the problem is, or I'd at least know who to call to get it fixed. Can an external hard drive be corrupted and completely wreck an operating system? FUCKITY. Details under the cut, if anyone can help me puzzle out what the heck is going on.
Okay, so:
- The computer has been acting strangely for the last few weeks. In Firefox, it takes ages to load some pages, and sometimes won't work for ages and just freezes. LJ, in particular, the computer doesn't like - it doesn't download more than half the icons on a page, it takes ages to load my flist page etc.
- A few days ago, the computer refused to boot up i.e., I would hit the power button, which would light, but nothing would happen. The screen would not come on, the light on my external hard drive would flare and then die off. The computer would just be - on, but not operating. This freaked me out. I tried a combination of things, but in one instance, disconnecting my external HD worked. The computer booted up. Connecting my external HD thereafter, when the computer was already on, seemed to work fine.
- Computer operated fine for a while.
- Today, same problem. Won't boot up, even with external HD disconnected. I discovered though, that if I left the external HD disconnected for a considerable period of time, the computer itself WOULD deign to boot up eventually. Everything seemed to be okay. I cleaned up the hard drive, but didn't have time to run a scan or defrag.
- Because I hooked the external HD up again, and it worked. ALL my files were there, and seemed fine. But then it froze my computer out again (presumably because I got a little ambitious and tried to download and do other things).
- And now the computer is not booting up again.
Can a USB device be corrupted? Did it corrupt the USB port or something? Because I took the external HD over to my brother's computer to test it. And when I hooked it up and started the computer, it didn't detect the external HD automatically. Only if I switched it on when the computer was already on would it recognise that there were something connected to the USB port. Weirdly enough, I got an error message - saying that one of the USB ports had malfunctioned and that I should try reconnecting the device. Two times this happened. And then it started breaking my brother's internet connection - which also goes through a router connected to a (separate) USB port.
So my brother's computer doesn't recognise the device at all, but mine does. It seems to work okay on mine, and I can see files and delete stuff and everything, so the content isn't yet compromised, and yet I suspect though am not certain that it's what freezes me out after a while.
Is it possible that there is some wacky virus wreaking havoc with my external HD, one that corrupts the computer and messes with the USB ports or whatever? Or is it a hardware issue for my computer? WTF. I don't understand. WHY IS IT SO STUPID, is what I want to know. I don't even know whether to take my computer to be fixed, or my external HD. (And who should I go to, anyway?
noldoparma, do you have anyone to recommend?)
2. So yeah, I might be on hiatus. I'm posting from my brother's computer right now, which only works since he's not at home - at 3am on a Sunday morning! - but clearly I can't do this when he IS home.
3. Tried to go for yoga today. FULL OF FAIL. Because I got there, after rushing down and ultimately paying far too much for parking, to discover that the idiot who signed me up for classes and promised to help me book them if I texted him, had NOT booked the class I wanted. Fuckwit. So instead of staying at home to flail (I had reason to do so, trust me), I wasted time, money and GRARGH.
4. Went out for a ridiculously expensive but quite exciting French dinner @ the St Regis hotel - it was a six-course meal that included lots of seafood. Smoked salmon to start, lobster and crab ravioli to follow, grapefruit sorbet to cleanse the palate, and then scallops with foie gras and smoked hazelnuts, before this hazelnut mousse biscuit dessert. Very exciting. I spent the entire time bitching in a mightily bitchy fashion to my poor fellow diners - JL and SC - about work suckage and my plans to abscond in some way in the next year. It's amusing that everyone just tells me to bite the bullet and DO IT. It's fear of the unknown, more than anything else, I think, that keeps me from really DOING anything about it. Even when I tell myself: it could work out. It should work out. You'll never know 'til you try.
5. Sigh.
Okay, so:
- The computer has been acting strangely for the last few weeks. In Firefox, it takes ages to load some pages, and sometimes won't work for ages and just freezes. LJ, in particular, the computer doesn't like - it doesn't download more than half the icons on a page, it takes ages to load my flist page etc.
- A few days ago, the computer refused to boot up i.e., I would hit the power button, which would light, but nothing would happen. The screen would not come on, the light on my external hard drive would flare and then die off. The computer would just be - on, but not operating. This freaked me out. I tried a combination of things, but in one instance, disconnecting my external HD worked. The computer booted up. Connecting my external HD thereafter, when the computer was already on, seemed to work fine.
- Computer operated fine for a while.
- Today, same problem. Won't boot up, even with external HD disconnected. I discovered though, that if I left the external HD disconnected for a considerable period of time, the computer itself WOULD deign to boot up eventually. Everything seemed to be okay. I cleaned up the hard drive, but didn't have time to run a scan or defrag.
- Because I hooked the external HD up again, and it worked. ALL my files were there, and seemed fine. But then it froze my computer out again (presumably because I got a little ambitious and tried to download and do other things).
- And now the computer is not booting up again.
Can a USB device be corrupted? Did it corrupt the USB port or something? Because I took the external HD over to my brother's computer to test it. And when I hooked it up and started the computer, it didn't detect the external HD automatically. Only if I switched it on when the computer was already on would it recognise that there were something connected to the USB port. Weirdly enough, I got an error message - saying that one of the USB ports had malfunctioned and that I should try reconnecting the device. Two times this happened. And then it started breaking my brother's internet connection - which also goes through a router connected to a (separate) USB port.
So my brother's computer doesn't recognise the device at all, but mine does. It seems to work okay on mine, and I can see files and delete stuff and everything, so the content isn't yet compromised, and yet I suspect though am not certain that it's what freezes me out after a while.
Is it possible that there is some wacky virus wreaking havoc with my external HD, one that corrupts the computer and messes with the USB ports or whatever? Or is it a hardware issue for my computer? WTF. I don't understand. WHY IS IT SO STUPID, is what I want to know. I don't even know whether to take my computer to be fixed, or my external HD. (And who should I go to, anyway?
noldoparma, do you have anyone to recommend?)
2. So yeah, I might be on hiatus. I'm posting from my brother's computer right now, which only works since he's not at home - at 3am on a Sunday morning! - but clearly I can't do this when he IS home.
3. Tried to go for yoga today. FULL OF FAIL. Because I got there, after rushing down and ultimately paying far too much for parking, to discover that the idiot who signed me up for classes and promised to help me book them if I texted him, had NOT booked the class I wanted. Fuckwit. So instead of staying at home to flail (I had reason to do so, trust me), I wasted time, money and GRARGH.
4. Went out for a ridiculously expensive but quite exciting French dinner @ the St Regis hotel - it was a six-course meal that included lots of seafood. Smoked salmon to start, lobster and crab ravioli to follow, grapefruit sorbet to cleanse the palate, and then scallops with foie gras and smoked hazelnuts, before this hazelnut mousse biscuit dessert. Very exciting. I spent the entire time bitching in a mightily bitchy fashion to my poor fellow diners - JL and SC - about work suckage and my plans to abscond in some way in the next year. It's amusing that everyone just tells me to bite the bullet and DO IT. It's fear of the unknown, more than anything else, I think, that keeps me from really DOING anything about it. Even when I tell myself: it could work out. It should work out. You'll never know 'til you try.
5. Sigh.