Problems in Geek-Land
OK... in short, our new crash-hot computer we bought back in December has bit the dust.
Which is just a bit inconvenient, considering that I have recently consolidated ALL of my files that I have ever had on any computer at home to its 320Gb HDD.
Yes, I know, How do you know it's the HDD that's died?
I don't. It's just a guess. Unfortunately I only have one other desktop in the house that I could test the theory on, and it's down at my mother-in-law's, and quite frankly, it's too hard and time consuming to bother opening two computers up and connecting in this HDD to find out, especially while it's still under warranty.
The computer turns on, but when you would normally hear the HDD kick in to start booting windows, it just sort of clicks for a second, the HDD light comes on for about half a second, and then no more disk noise at all. Just the hum of the fans.
So I figure it's either some circuit on the motherboard or it's the hard disk. Since it's under warranty, I'm hoping for the former. They can just deal with it at their end. As long as my data is still safe and retrievable, I'm happy.
Oddly, this whole thing started when I plugged my iPod into it last night. The screen froze in iTunes and wouldn't give me back my mouse and keyboard. Tried going to task manager, nothing. Totally frozen. After sitting there for about a good 20 minutes, I had to kill the power. It wasn't coming back.
So tomorrow morning I get the pleasure of schlepping into the city to drop that sucker off at the place we bought it and tell them we need it sorted ASAP... as in 2 days ago. Luckily they're a little outfit of Chinese geeks, who are pretty reasonable and pretty fast at things. If I'd bought it somewhere like Harris, it would be weeks before this was sorted!
Pete's had someone assisting him while he's recovering, and this is the computer she was using. This computer has the travel app she needs on it, which is a per-computer license, so can't just be installed again on another computer. And it has all the photos and music I've ever had on the hard disk. Granted, I've got a large majority of the music and the older photos backed up to DVD somewhere, so I won't lose everything, but it's still not very convenient.
So Pete and I straightaway hook the one remaining laptop up... the one I was using while Pete was in the hospital... to make sure it's got the travel software on it. It does, but something immediately happens with the display, and somehow it loses its ability to hook to an external monitor.
After about 2 hours of fiddling, Pete's got it limping along, but where we used to have about 8 computers around the place, we've now got about 2.5 actual working ones. What has become of us?
And all of this is way out of my league. I'm a soft geek, not a hard geek. Throw apps and data at me, and I'm fine. But as soon as circuits and hard disks and peripherals come into the picture, I run for the hills! I do NOT have an aptitude for this stuff!
I suspect what we really need is a voltage meter, to figure out at what point the juice is not getting to the Hard Disk. It's either going to be at its input or at the output from the motherboard, or somewhere on the motherboard. But we don't have one, so that'll have to wait too.
Hopefully these guys can sort it tomorrow. Was thinking of getting a second hard disk put into it anyway, so if they can get it working again, I might do that.
Suffice to say, Pete and I will also be buying a file server and implementing the backup software that we've been dragging our heels on.
Isn't that always the way? Keep saying, "Yeah, we need to have a backup plan" but not actually put it into play until it's too late?!
Will I never learn?
Argh.
Which is just a bit inconvenient, considering that I have recently consolidated ALL of my files that I have ever had on any computer at home to its 320Gb HDD.
Yes, I know, How do you know it's the HDD that's died?
I don't. It's just a guess. Unfortunately I only have one other desktop in the house that I could test the theory on, and it's down at my mother-in-law's, and quite frankly, it's too hard and time consuming to bother opening two computers up and connecting in this HDD to find out, especially while it's still under warranty.
The computer turns on, but when you would normally hear the HDD kick in to start booting windows, it just sort of clicks for a second, the HDD light comes on for about half a second, and then no more disk noise at all. Just the hum of the fans.
So I figure it's either some circuit on the motherboard or it's the hard disk. Since it's under warranty, I'm hoping for the former. They can just deal with it at their end. As long as my data is still safe and retrievable, I'm happy.
Oddly, this whole thing started when I plugged my iPod into it last night. The screen froze in iTunes and wouldn't give me back my mouse and keyboard. Tried going to task manager, nothing. Totally frozen. After sitting there for about a good 20 minutes, I had to kill the power. It wasn't coming back.
So tomorrow morning I get the pleasure of schlepping into the city to drop that sucker off at the place we bought it and tell them we need it sorted ASAP... as in 2 days ago. Luckily they're a little outfit of Chinese geeks, who are pretty reasonable and pretty fast at things. If I'd bought it somewhere like Harris, it would be weeks before this was sorted!
Pete's had someone assisting him while he's recovering, and this is the computer she was using. This computer has the travel app she needs on it, which is a per-computer license, so can't just be installed again on another computer. And it has all the photos and music I've ever had on the hard disk. Granted, I've got a large majority of the music and the older photos backed up to DVD somewhere, so I won't lose everything, but it's still not very convenient.
So Pete and I straightaway hook the one remaining laptop up... the one I was using while Pete was in the hospital... to make sure it's got the travel software on it. It does, but something immediately happens with the display, and somehow it loses its ability to hook to an external monitor.
After about 2 hours of fiddling, Pete's got it limping along, but where we used to have about 8 computers around the place, we've now got about 2.5 actual working ones. What has become of us?
And all of this is way out of my league. I'm a soft geek, not a hard geek. Throw apps and data at me, and I'm fine. But as soon as circuits and hard disks and peripherals come into the picture, I run for the hills! I do NOT have an aptitude for this stuff!
I suspect what we really need is a voltage meter, to figure out at what point the juice is not getting to the Hard Disk. It's either going to be at its input or at the output from the motherboard, or somewhere on the motherboard. But we don't have one, so that'll have to wait too.
Hopefully these guys can sort it tomorrow. Was thinking of getting a second hard disk put into it anyway, so if they can get it working again, I might do that.
Suffice to say, Pete and I will also be buying a file server and implementing the backup software that we've been dragging our heels on.
Isn't that always the way? Keep saying, "Yeah, we need to have a backup plan" but not actually put it into play until it's too late?!
Will I never learn?
Argh.