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Monday, September 14, 2015

Leading cause of insanity

My computer hates me. Okay, I doubt that my computer has such a complex thought but seriously, there are days when I'm convinced the gremlins buried deep inside have it in for me. Case in point—today the curser is acting as if it has a mind of its own when I'm on the Net. "Maybe I'll go where you direct me, maybe I won't."  And recently it's been doing such unnerving things as suddenly going black or freezing up. Then there's the incomprehensible message that reads ProgramFiles/Windows NT corrupt and unreadable. Run Chkdsk utility. Say what? Like I'm supposed to know what that means.
I have a pretty good idea what the core problem is. I'm just not sure how to do anything about it short of hiring someone to whip said computer into shape. A couple of months ago I updated my virus, etc protection program to the tune of about $80 a year. Of course the updating took longer than I thought it would but there's no way I'm going to not have some kind of protection so figured I'd covered my tail.
Not.
About an hour later, everything froze. My monitor went black. When I punched the power button on the tower, nothing happened so I unplugged the darn thing and plugged it back in. Nothing. Always before the unplug/plug has gotten my computer's attention but not this time. Hey, I'm a writer. There's no way I can exist without my computer aka my brain. In a bit of a panic, I took the tower to my trusty computer tech. (Of course this all happened on a Friday afternoon)
Long story short, my tech who I'd adopt if he wasn't a smoker, called the next day to let me know he'd isolated the problem. As I understand it, the virus protection update is set up to work with Windows 10 and I'm holding onto my Windows 7 for as long as I can. The protection program apparently went through my computer making random decisions about which utilities to keep and which to dump. My tech told me that 80-90% of his work comes from similar lack of communication.
So my tech got rid of what he thought were all signs of the program I paid $80 for and installed AGV which he trusts for a much-appeciated low price. He also encouraged me to contact my credit card company and ask for my money back from the original program which I did.
All well and good except I'm convinced that gremlins from the original program are still hanging around in my hard drive determined to mess with my mind. It's a conspiracy I say, a conspiracy designed to prove that computers are a leading cause of insanity.
At least I can still word process aka write without problems which is what I've been doing.   
And that's my excuse for why I'm behind.



1 comment:

  1. And I thought writing email with yahoo was a pain in the neck. That's a lot of trouble, Vella. Once my computer burned to a crisp in the middle of one of our Fandangos. I wrote by hand (I do that anyway) until I got a new computer a couple months later. I had to transfer the entire book to the computer all at once instead of in bits like I usually do. Thank goodness I had a Kindle so I could keep in touch with emails. It makes ya crazy, doesn't it?
    All the best to your corner of planet Earth.

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