Hubby had fun with the old computer last night. It's now an empty shell and a bucket of parts.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Goodbye, Part 2
Hubby had fun with the old computer last night. It's now an empty shell and a bucket of parts.
Monday, January 18, 2010
Goodbye to an Old Friend
Hubby and I are saying goodbye to an old friend this week. Well, not really a friend, and more like good riddance and no love lost, but definitely old. Our desktop computer has died.
When we took the computer to my school's IT department I asked them to not even look for the virus and just wipe the drive and rebuild the system. As I mentioned in the post about the virus I got the computer in 2002 (brand new and state-of-the-art then) so it was no spring chicken here in 2010. I used that computer to work from home for several years and it occurred to me there was undoubtedly all kinds of junk on it I hadn't been able to uninstall (mostly due to services related to databases and other corporate applications, I imagine), and a good wiping was probably just what it needed. The IT guys checked it out when we got there and said they'd be happy to work on it, but warned that due to its age they might have trouble reloading some of the hardware drivers (due to their not existing anymore). We said that was fine and left them to do their best.
Turned out the drivers weren't a problem. Or at least they don't know if they were. The person working on it never got that far: After reformatting the drive multiple times he couldn't reload the Windows XP operating system. He described everything he did to try to get it to work before calling me; I felt sorry for him going to all that trouble, but on the other hand he gets paid for all the work he did on it (since it's his job) so better him than me. He doesn't know what happened between the time we brought it in and when he started working on it but his guess is it's something physically wrong with the hard drive itself—the thing is just old and it wore out. (Happens to the best of us, eh?) Tomorrow hubby and I are going to pick up the computer to say goodbye... Or more like bring it home to take it apart and salvage some of its parts.
More importantly, now that the computer is a confirmed casualty it means we need a new one to replace it. I have a laptop I use for school but the desktop was our household computer (and the one hubby uses for everything), and frankly I'm just not comfortable having only one computer in the house now, sad as that sounds. We really don't need another laptop so we're getting a new desktop; desktops are a lot cheaper than laptops but they're also harder to find these days! My school bookstore doesn't even sell them (only laptops). I did some research and consulted with my dad (who knows a thing or two about computers) and I found one that will suit us just fine:
I ordered it from Amazon the other day. (They happened to have the one I was looking at for a cheaper price than where I originally found it.) It says it will take 2-4 weeks to ship so we won't get it until sometime in mid-February; I don't know why it'll take so long, maybe they have to build it from scratch or something. Oh well, we'll live with just one computer in the house until then and hubby will just have to use the laptop to check his e-mail when I'm not on it.
There is one happy result from all this. (Not that I consider any of this particularly "unhappy" other than the days I wasted trying to eradicate the virus myself). The new computer will have an updated video card (compared to the one from eight years ago) so hubby will finally be able to play some games on it. He has one particular game that he couldn't play on the old desktop due to the video card; he loaded it on the laptop and it works fine, but since I'm always on the laptop he never gets it for long enough to play it. With the new desktop he should be able to play it to his heart's content, and it opens up the possibility of getting more games in the future. (Can you say birthday present idea?) Not that hubby is a huge gamer and he doesn't have a lot of time to play them, anyway, but at least now he'll have the option to waste (I mean spend) some time playing some computer games if he wants to.
When we took the computer to my school's IT department I asked them to not even look for the virus and just wipe the drive and rebuild the system. As I mentioned in the post about the virus I got the computer in 2002 (brand new and state-of-the-art then) so it was no spring chicken here in 2010. I used that computer to work from home for several years and it occurred to me there was undoubtedly all kinds of junk on it I hadn't been able to uninstall (mostly due to services related to databases and other corporate applications, I imagine), and a good wiping was probably just what it needed. The IT guys checked it out when we got there and said they'd be happy to work on it, but warned that due to its age they might have trouble reloading some of the hardware drivers (due to their not existing anymore). We said that was fine and left them to do their best.
Turned out the drivers weren't a problem. Or at least they don't know if they were. The person working on it never got that far: After reformatting the drive multiple times he couldn't reload the Windows XP operating system. He described everything he did to try to get it to work before calling me; I felt sorry for him going to all that trouble, but on the other hand he gets paid for all the work he did on it (since it's his job) so better him than me. He doesn't know what happened between the time we brought it in and when he started working on it but his guess is it's something physically wrong with the hard drive itself—the thing is just old and it wore out. (Happens to the best of us, eh?) Tomorrow hubby and I are going to pick up the computer to say goodbye... Or more like bring it home to take it apart and salvage some of its parts.
More importantly, now that the computer is a confirmed casualty it means we need a new one to replace it. I have a laptop I use for school but the desktop was our household computer (and the one hubby uses for everything), and frankly I'm just not comfortable having only one computer in the house now, sad as that sounds. We really don't need another laptop so we're getting a new desktop; desktops are a lot cheaper than laptops but they're also harder to find these days! My school bookstore doesn't even sell them (only laptops). I did some research and consulted with my dad (who knows a thing or two about computers) and I found one that will suit us just fine:
There is one happy result from all this. (Not that I consider any of this particularly "unhappy" other than the days I wasted trying to eradicate the virus myself). The new computer will have an updated video card (compared to the one from eight years ago) so hubby will finally be able to play some games on it. He has one particular game that he couldn't play on the old desktop due to the video card; he loaded it on the laptop and it works fine, but since I'm always on the laptop he never gets it for long enough to play it. With the new desktop he should be able to play it to his heart's content, and it opens up the possibility of getting more games in the future. (Can you say birthday present idea?) Not that hubby is a huge gamer and he doesn't have a lot of time to play them, anyway, but at least now he'll have the option to waste (I mean spend) some time playing some computer games if he wants to.
Monday, January 11, 2010
Thursday, January 7, 2010
The Virus
How to deal with a computer virus:
This was supposed to be my week "off." I thought I'd finally have time to attack various things on my list that never get done, and start working on my capstone project for this semester. Instead, with classes starting in only three days, my list is virtually untouched and I'm feeling way behind where I wanted to be with the project. Instead of working on those things I lost two days of my life to a computer: Not sitting in front of it getting work done like I'd planned, but attempting to deal with the first computer virus of my computing life. (Since my dad worked with computers we had computers in our house way before it was fashionable to do so. I've been around home computers for a LONG time.) Suffice it to say I was completely unsuccessful in my attempt, other than last I checked the computer still booted. (This is a good thing.)
Thanks to being a student I can take the computer to my school's IT department and let them try to fix it, which will most likely mean wiping the drive, reinstalling the operating system and starting from scratch. The computer has been through a lot in the seven-and-a-half years I've owned it so a good wiping probably isn't a bad idea. Eventually we'll replace the desktop computer with something newer, but at least this will allow us to put it off a little longer.
- Spend two days playing system administrator, running every virus and malware scan imaginable to try and track down something. Without knowing exactly what you're doing. Hope the computer still boots when you're done.
- Become immensely frustrated.
- Order pizza.
- Buy an external hard drive to backup data to prepare the computer to have its drive wiped.
- Take the computer to NC State University's IT department and let them deal with it.
This was supposed to be my week "off." I thought I'd finally have time to attack various things on my list that never get done, and start working on my capstone project for this semester. Instead, with classes starting in only three days, my list is virtually untouched and I'm feeling way behind where I wanted to be with the project. Instead of working on those things I lost two days of my life to a computer: Not sitting in front of it getting work done like I'd planned, but attempting to deal with the first computer virus of my computing life. (Since my dad worked with computers we had computers in our house way before it was fashionable to do so. I've been around home computers for a LONG time.) Suffice it to say I was completely unsuccessful in my attempt, other than last I checked the computer still booted. (This is a good thing.)
Thanks to being a student I can take the computer to my school's IT department and let them try to fix it, which will most likely mean wiping the drive, reinstalling the operating system and starting from scratch. The computer has been through a lot in the seven-and-a-half years I've owned it so a good wiping probably isn't a bad idea. Eventually we'll replace the desktop computer with something newer, but at least this will allow us to put it off a little longer.
Friday, January 1, 2010
Happy New Year!
I always miss California the most on January 1st. I grew up watching the Rose Parade on TV, and when I lived closer to Pasadena I sometimes heard the Stealth Bomber fly over my house on its way back to base. I still watch the parade on TV, but it's just not the same as being in California (even though I never had any desire to actually go to the parade myself). Now I just look at the mountains in the background—"my mountains," as I call them (otherwise known as the San Gabriel Mountains)— and enjoy the scenery from afar.
I've never been much of one for New Year's resolutions. I've always figured if there's something I want (or don't want) to do I should just resolve to do it, with or without a change in the calendar. Sometimes it seems like making New Year's resolutions is a recipe for failure from the beginning: There's so much hype and pressure around the very concept it's hard to live up to expectations. I don't know what the average for keeping New Year's resolutions is (two weeks? three?), but I know I never managed to keep them for very long. Don't get me wrong, I'd like to eat better and exercise more as much as the next person, but I just don't feel the need to resolve to do so on New Year's Day.
There is one resolution, however, that I will say today, and it's something I'll probably start talking a lot more about next summer. I'm currently on track to graduate with my M.S. in Technical Communication in December, 2010. My 2010 New Year's resolution is I'd like to have a job lined up by New Year's 2011. Not quite a resolution that I have complete control over, but definitely something I'll be working toward during the second half of the year.
I've never been much of one for New Year's resolutions. I've always figured if there's something I want (or don't want) to do I should just resolve to do it, with or without a change in the calendar. Sometimes it seems like making New Year's resolutions is a recipe for failure from the beginning: There's so much hype and pressure around the very concept it's hard to live up to expectations. I don't know what the average for keeping New Year's resolutions is (two weeks? three?), but I know I never managed to keep them for very long. Don't get me wrong, I'd like to eat better and exercise more as much as the next person, but I just don't feel the need to resolve to do so on New Year's Day.
There is one resolution, however, that I will say today, and it's something I'll probably start talking a lot more about next summer. I'm currently on track to graduate with my M.S. in Technical Communication in December, 2010. My 2010 New Year's resolution is I'd like to have a job lined up by New Year's 2011. Not quite a resolution that I have complete control over, but definitely something I'll be working toward during the second half of the year.
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