The field laptop is (almost) dead. Long live new field laptop
When my mom got me a laptop for Christmas last year, I admit I was a bit dubious.
I had a laptop. Sure, a few months ago, the screen cracked, forcing me to turn off the touch screen function, but other then that, it was a perfectly functional laptop. It was light and it was small, which made it very useful for writing in the field. And, since I've found that I tend to get a lot more work done when I'm anywhere but my apartment, it has become my de facto work computer.
Still, unlike a large computer screen, the new laptop was clearly useful. It was larger then my field laptop, but still light enough to be carried around. And... knowing my record with laptops, there was no question that i would need it sooner or later. So I thanked my mom for the gift and set it aside.
Until today (Sunday, August 14, that is).
It the last two months or so, I could no longer say that my field laptop was working fine. In my amateur opinion, it seems that the connection between the hardrive and the rest of the computer wasn't quite working right, leading to "disk not found" errors.
More and more, my computer was asking me to restart and scan the disk for errors. Programs that used to run smoothly would freeze up. And more and more, I would get this weird thing where I would put computer in sleep mode, only to have the laptop act as if I shut it down when I opened the lid again.
Things took a turn for the worse on Friday. Blue screen after blue screen. Program freezes. System freezes. Sudden crashes. Since I'm not new to this sort of thing, I kept hitting "save" once every few minutes - but, for some reason, that didn't prevent a decent chunk of the article I was working on from not saving at all after yet another blue screen of death. And when I rewrote the missing portion from scratch, the computer refused to save it - or any documents made in any program - onto the hardrive. (The solution - copy-paste the file into online office suite function of my Hotmail account, save it onto OneDrive and attach it).
On Saturday, the computer work fine - until I headed to sleep, and saw a blue screen.
Since I was going to sleep, I didn't bother with it, figuring that I would wake up the next morning and everything will be back to normal.
It goes without saying that things didn't work out this way.
When the computer restarted, it seemed to take forever to log me in. Frustrated, I shut it down. When it came back online, same thing happened. This time, I decided to wait, and I wound up dozing off.
When I woke up, I found that my desktop customization was gone completely and so were all of my files.
Well, not quite. Booting up my home laptop, I googled the problem and discovered that what happened was that Windows created a temporary profile (apparently, that's a Windows 8/8.1 thing). My user profile was still there, and so were my files - but while I could access them, even copy them, I couldn't actually log into the proper profile. When you are in a temporary profile, all of the software reverts to factory settings, and whatever changes you made won't get carried over next time you log in (because, again, temporary).
I looked for a fix online, and the only solution anyone seemed to be suggesting was to create a new profile, copy the old documents into that and delete the old profile.
If I didn't have another laptop lying around, I might have done it. But since I did - and since, like I said, the computer seemed to be going downhill - I figured that was a sign.
I spent the better part of the day trying to fix the old field laptop and, once that failing, setting up the new field laptop, installing the software, importing Firefox bookmarks and settings, installing OpenOffice (since this laptop didn't even come with a trial version of MS Office) and, oh yeah, I had to finish work. (I had two small articles due that I was going to finish in the morning, but, instead, I wound up finishing them in the evening, on the new laptop).
I'll still need to move all of the documents, photos, Mp3s, podcast downloads and videos onto this field laptop. I will need to import podcast feeds, playlists and bookmarks from Winamp, Kindle formatted books I saved onto the hardrive, etc. I have been trying to import Firefox tabs using the recovery files, but so far, the laptop has been resisting it. But we'll see.
If nothing else, this isn't the unmitigated disaster that was the literal and figurative crash of my 2013-2014 field laptop, where I lost everything that was on its hardrive. Every photo I didn't upload on flickr, every story I didn't post on Livejournal and every article that didn't get published was gone. This time, at least, all of this is retrievable.
One thing that worries me is that something weird seems to be going on with its power options. When it's plugged in, it keeps saying that's 98% and not charging. Unplugging it and leaving it unplugged for a few minutes proved that it's not just saying it - the power percentage dropped to 96%, and when it plugged it back in, it stayed at 96%. it's still at 96% as of this writing).
Through all of this, my home laptop has been working... Though it hasn't been taking the heat from my air-conditioner-less apartment very well (i.e. if it gets too warm, it simply shuts down to avoid overheating). I wonder if I should look into replacing its fan... But then, I remember that the laptop has been around since 2008, and I wonder if it's worth the trouble. Yet the part of me wants to because... Since what happened to the 2014 field laptop, I've become paranoid about losing my fiction, and had my stories and articles back up on it. Plus, it's set up just the way I like it - MS Office 2000, Firefox that has been fine-tuned through years of tinkering, Winamp that years of plugins and adjustments.
But that's something I can (hopefully) figure out later. *тьфу-тьфу-тьфу* For now, my priority is moving the files onto the new field laptop (Polevoy II). Hopefully, this weird battery power thing is temporary.
I had a laptop. Sure, a few months ago, the screen cracked, forcing me to turn off the touch screen function, but other then that, it was a perfectly functional laptop. It was light and it was small, which made it very useful for writing in the field. And, since I've found that I tend to get a lot more work done when I'm anywhere but my apartment, it has become my de facto work computer.
Still, unlike a large computer screen, the new laptop was clearly useful. It was larger then my field laptop, but still light enough to be carried around. And... knowing my record with laptops, there was no question that i would need it sooner or later. So I thanked my mom for the gift and set it aside.
Until today (Sunday, August 14, that is).
It the last two months or so, I could no longer say that my field laptop was working fine. In my amateur opinion, it seems that the connection between the hardrive and the rest of the computer wasn't quite working right, leading to "disk not found" errors.
More and more, my computer was asking me to restart and scan the disk for errors. Programs that used to run smoothly would freeze up. And more and more, I would get this weird thing where I would put computer in sleep mode, only to have the laptop act as if I shut it down when I opened the lid again.
Things took a turn for the worse on Friday. Blue screen after blue screen. Program freezes. System freezes. Sudden crashes. Since I'm not new to this sort of thing, I kept hitting "save" once every few minutes - but, for some reason, that didn't prevent a decent chunk of the article I was working on from not saving at all after yet another blue screen of death. And when I rewrote the missing portion from scratch, the computer refused to save it - or any documents made in any program - onto the hardrive. (The solution - copy-paste the file into online office suite function of my Hotmail account, save it onto OneDrive and attach it).
On Saturday, the computer work fine - until I headed to sleep, and saw a blue screen.
Since I was going to sleep, I didn't bother with it, figuring that I would wake up the next morning and everything will be back to normal.
It goes without saying that things didn't work out this way.
When the computer restarted, it seemed to take forever to log me in. Frustrated, I shut it down. When it came back online, same thing happened. This time, I decided to wait, and I wound up dozing off.
When I woke up, I found that my desktop customization was gone completely and so were all of my files.
Well, not quite. Booting up my home laptop, I googled the problem and discovered that what happened was that Windows created a temporary profile (apparently, that's a Windows 8/8.1 thing). My user profile was still there, and so were my files - but while I could access them, even copy them, I couldn't actually log into the proper profile. When you are in a temporary profile, all of the software reverts to factory settings, and whatever changes you made won't get carried over next time you log in (because, again, temporary).
I looked for a fix online, and the only solution anyone seemed to be suggesting was to create a new profile, copy the old documents into that and delete the old profile.
If I didn't have another laptop lying around, I might have done it. But since I did - and since, like I said, the computer seemed to be going downhill - I figured that was a sign.
I spent the better part of the day trying to fix the old field laptop and, once that failing, setting up the new field laptop, installing the software, importing Firefox bookmarks and settings, installing OpenOffice (since this laptop didn't even come with a trial version of MS Office) and, oh yeah, I had to finish work. (I had two small articles due that I was going to finish in the morning, but, instead, I wound up finishing them in the evening, on the new laptop).
I'll still need to move all of the documents, photos, Mp3s, podcast downloads and videos onto this field laptop. I will need to import podcast feeds, playlists and bookmarks from Winamp, Kindle formatted books I saved onto the hardrive, etc. I have been trying to import Firefox tabs using the recovery files, but so far, the laptop has been resisting it. But we'll see.
If nothing else, this isn't the unmitigated disaster that was the literal and figurative crash of my 2013-2014 field laptop, where I lost everything that was on its hardrive. Every photo I didn't upload on flickr, every story I didn't post on Livejournal and every article that didn't get published was gone. This time, at least, all of this is retrievable.
One thing that worries me is that something weird seems to be going on with its power options. When it's plugged in, it keeps saying that's 98% and not charging. Unplugging it and leaving it unplugged for a few minutes proved that it's not just saying it - the power percentage dropped to 96%, and when it plugged it back in, it stayed at 96%. it's still at 96% as of this writing).
Through all of this, my home laptop has been working... Though it hasn't been taking the heat from my air-conditioner-less apartment very well (i.e. if it gets too warm, it simply shuts down to avoid overheating). I wonder if I should look into replacing its fan... But then, I remember that the laptop has been around since 2008, and I wonder if it's worth the trouble. Yet the part of me wants to because... Since what happened to the 2014 field laptop, I've become paranoid about losing my fiction, and had my stories and articles back up on it. Plus, it's set up just the way I like it - MS Office 2000, Firefox that has been fine-tuned through years of tinkering, Winamp that years of plugins and adjustments.
But that's something I can (hopefully) figure out later. *тьфу-тьфу-тьфу* For now, my priority is moving the files onto the new field laptop (Polevoy II). Hopefully, this weird battery power thing is temporary.