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Laptop woes
Mar. 19th, 2009 04:16 amI need to just tell myself to keep my hands to myself and not do anything stupid when it comes to my computer. I've fucked it up three times already. The first time was last February, only a month after I had gotten my new laptop from Dell. What happened, I can't even remember all that well anymore but I ended up restoring it to factory settings.
The second time was this weekend. I was doing some clean up of programs I don't use and I ended up either deleting or uninstalling something that I needed and I ended up getting massive BSODs, so much so I couldn't even go five minutes after signing on without it going to BSOD. In the end, I realized I couldn't keep trying to fix it when I couldn't get enough time to fix it. I spent about five or so hours like that before deciding to once again restore the computer to factory settings.
That was a couple days ago. And I thought I had licked it and things were good. I managed to back up my essentials off of the laptop harddrive (my beloved pictures, my translations and my manga, the TV shows I had been downloading for a few days now, my songs and my favorite links) so I was feeling good. Sure, getting my laptop to where it was before I fucked it up took me like eight hours (I didn't really sleep that night) but I got my programs to where I mostly wanted them. There were a few trials I had to go through with a couple of them that I don't really want to go through because it pissed me off (I managed to lose my programs DVD with all the programs I generally like on a new computer so I had to go and find new downloads and some of them didn't work as I wanted them to) but I managed. I took the opportunity to try out McAfee but that sent me into more BSODs. So I uninstalled it for Avast, one that I've used for a while now with no trouble.
One problem though, McAfee was still listed as an antivirus from the Security Center. That bugged me because I had already uninstalled it so it shouldn't be listed at all. But it was. So I went online and found a fix for it via Google. That was a BIG, HUGE, STUPID mistake. That sent my laptop into even more severe BSODs -- it didn't even last five minutes before signing on before BSOD'ing. Instead, I would type my password in to sign on and as soon as I saw my desktop, it would go into a BSOD. And the problem was that last time, I had no idea what I did (outside of the vague idea) to cause my BSOD. This time I knew fully well what it was and had an idea of how to fix it but with absolutely no way to fix it. I tried doing it from Safe Mode but unfortunately, it wasn't possible.
So I was forced into my third System Recovery via restoring it to factory settings. Only this time, I wasn't as prepared. I had backed up my essential data before -- but when I thought I had fixed things, I got rid of the majority of it. The stuff that I kept? The two manga series I loved the most, my music and my translations. My translations were probably the most important because I would have hurt the most had lost those. But I ended up losing fours days worth of downloading of JAG seasons 1-3 (and I had finished 5 episodes of season 1 as well as the episode I most wanted to watch but didn't get to see yet!), something that saddens me because of the low number of seeds and peers and the general sluggishness of the download. It's going to take me days to get back to where I was.
But that didn't hurt the most. What hurt the most was losing my pictures, all my beloved pictures of the last year. :( I uploaded the best of the crop onto Flickr so I still have copies available but I let my Flickr Pro account lapse because I'm not taking as many pictures this year as I have in the past so I have no reason to need a Pro account. But you need a Pro account to access all of your pictures and not just the latest 200... I'll probably end up buying it again but I'm in no hurry now...
What also hurt? Losing my favorites. All those links of places I'm never going to see again. Gah, it makes me wish I had looked more into being a my.delicious user so I would have a copy of my links online somewhere, if only as a back up. It's all gone now... I went and redownloaded my other manga but I can't redownload my links... :( It gets me so depressed when I think about it.
Anyway, that was last night. Again, no sleep. I still have to download and install a butt load of Windows Security Updates but I have the bare minimum of programs as well as one antivirus so I won't get the same problem as last time. So far, my computer seems fine... But damn, I hate computer problems. It's like the whole world slows down and everything just stops because such an important part of your life and existence is out of whack. I've been pretty depressed the last couple of days and the lack of sleep doesn't help at all. I'm scared that I'll get another BSOD and I'm scared there's something I'm doing to cause my computer irreparable harm. I'm scared to restart my computer even though I need to because I just installed a number of programs and security updates that require them because something might happen to send me into a BSOD. I'm just so out of whack right now and so out of it right now... I feel like I'm just existing on a state of heightened fear, suspended as I await another problem with my computer and never fully being able to relax.
My brother came home today and we had some nice fun playing Street Fighter IV but now that that's over, I'm back to being worried for my computer. I've only had it a year and I'm pretty sure my problems are driver based which means it's a software problem and not a hardware one, something that makes it infinitely easier to solve. But I still don't know what exactly is wrong or if it really is just a software program. I've been having problems since forever and maybe it's just a Vista thing or a Windows thing or just something is wrong with my computer but just having problems scare the hell out of me. I can't bear to be offline. I need that connection. And just knowing things are not well with laptop just makes me feel like my whole world is not well either. *sigh* I'm really, really hoping this is it. I'm not going to do a damn thing this time. Hopefully I'll come out of the restart okay (gonna do it after this entry) but if not, I think I'll end up crying... I don't think I can take much more of this... :(
The second time was this weekend. I was doing some clean up of programs I don't use and I ended up either deleting or uninstalling something that I needed and I ended up getting massive BSODs, so much so I couldn't even go five minutes after signing on without it going to BSOD. In the end, I realized I couldn't keep trying to fix it when I couldn't get enough time to fix it. I spent about five or so hours like that before deciding to once again restore the computer to factory settings.
That was a couple days ago. And I thought I had licked it and things were good. I managed to back up my essentials off of the laptop harddrive (my beloved pictures, my translations and my manga, the TV shows I had been downloading for a few days now, my songs and my favorite links) so I was feeling good. Sure, getting my laptop to where it was before I fucked it up took me like eight hours (I didn't really sleep that night) but I got my programs to where I mostly wanted them. There were a few trials I had to go through with a couple of them that I don't really want to go through because it pissed me off (I managed to lose my programs DVD with all the programs I generally like on a new computer so I had to go and find new downloads and some of them didn't work as I wanted them to) but I managed. I took the opportunity to try out McAfee but that sent me into more BSODs. So I uninstalled it for Avast, one that I've used for a while now with no trouble.
One problem though, McAfee was still listed as an antivirus from the Security Center. That bugged me because I had already uninstalled it so it shouldn't be listed at all. But it was. So I went online and found a fix for it via Google. That was a BIG, HUGE, STUPID mistake. That sent my laptop into even more severe BSODs -- it didn't even last five minutes before signing on before BSOD'ing. Instead, I would type my password in to sign on and as soon as I saw my desktop, it would go into a BSOD. And the problem was that last time, I had no idea what I did (outside of the vague idea) to cause my BSOD. This time I knew fully well what it was and had an idea of how to fix it but with absolutely no way to fix it. I tried doing it from Safe Mode but unfortunately, it wasn't possible.
So I was forced into my third System Recovery via restoring it to factory settings. Only this time, I wasn't as prepared. I had backed up my essential data before -- but when I thought I had fixed things, I got rid of the majority of it. The stuff that I kept? The two manga series I loved the most, my music and my translations. My translations were probably the most important because I would have hurt the most had lost those. But I ended up losing fours days worth of downloading of JAG seasons 1-3 (and I had finished 5 episodes of season 1 as well as the episode I most wanted to watch but didn't get to see yet!), something that saddens me because of the low number of seeds and peers and the general sluggishness of the download. It's going to take me days to get back to where I was.
But that didn't hurt the most. What hurt the most was losing my pictures, all my beloved pictures of the last year. :( I uploaded the best of the crop onto Flickr so I still have copies available but I let my Flickr Pro account lapse because I'm not taking as many pictures this year as I have in the past so I have no reason to need a Pro account. But you need a Pro account to access all of your pictures and not just the latest 200... I'll probably end up buying it again but I'm in no hurry now...
What also hurt? Losing my favorites. All those links of places I'm never going to see again. Gah, it makes me wish I had looked more into being a my.delicious user so I would have a copy of my links online somewhere, if only as a back up. It's all gone now... I went and redownloaded my other manga but I can't redownload my links... :( It gets me so depressed when I think about it.
Anyway, that was last night. Again, no sleep. I still have to download and install a butt load of Windows Security Updates but I have the bare minimum of programs as well as one antivirus so I won't get the same problem as last time. So far, my computer seems fine... But damn, I hate computer problems. It's like the whole world slows down and everything just stops because such an important part of your life and existence is out of whack. I've been pretty depressed the last couple of days and the lack of sleep doesn't help at all. I'm scared that I'll get another BSOD and I'm scared there's something I'm doing to cause my computer irreparable harm. I'm scared to restart my computer even though I need to because I just installed a number of programs and security updates that require them because something might happen to send me into a BSOD. I'm just so out of whack right now and so out of it right now... I feel like I'm just existing on a state of heightened fear, suspended as I await another problem with my computer and never fully being able to relax.
My brother came home today and we had some nice fun playing Street Fighter IV but now that that's over, I'm back to being worried for my computer. I've only had it a year and I'm pretty sure my problems are driver based which means it's a software problem and not a hardware one, something that makes it infinitely easier to solve. But I still don't know what exactly is wrong or if it really is just a software program. I've been having problems since forever and maybe it's just a Vista thing or a Windows thing or just something is wrong with my computer but just having problems scare the hell out of me. I can't bear to be offline. I need that connection. And just knowing things are not well with laptop just makes me feel like my whole world is not well either. *sigh* I'm really, really hoping this is it. I'm not going to do a damn thing this time. Hopefully I'll come out of the restart okay (gonna do it after this entry) but if not, I think I'll end up crying... I don't think I can take much more of this... :(
