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I
need to make an apology for received but unpublished
news this week as my computer totally crashed on Saturday
and I lost all of my emails.
Saturday
just was not a good day here in general - that is, until
the evening, when Tina and I went to the Prince of Wales
to relax and I have to admit to using many words from the
'Anglo Saxon Dictionary of Invective' - directed specifically
at 'PC World' that day.
It
all began last Tuesday, when
my computer - the new one I bought last December because
I was having trouble with the original - crashed for absolutely
no reason whatsoever - suddenly - displaying the Blue Screen
of Death. It
was not even doing any serious processing, or running anything
other than text editing programmes at the time. It was a
sudden failure due to a corrupt factory set hard disc. To
cut a long story short, with some knowledge from a past
life (when I had one), I managed to get it running again
but it happened four more times that same day at random
intervals, and having already spent three days preparing
last week's news, I only just managed to get it published
very late at night, when most sensible people were cosy
in their beds, backing up every change I made instantly,
for fear of losing it.
The
problem kept reoccurring and by Friday evening, I thought,
'unprintable expletive! Perhaps I had better investigate
more fully'. I ran the DOS utility 'chkdsk /f' to check
this hard disc. I left this scanning and walked to the Rowing
Club for the 'Zebras' gig. On arriving home at around 1:30
am, I thought I would check the machine before bed and the
disc checking utility had hung at 84% complete. There was
absolutely nothing I could do but pull the plug to get out
of it. The hard disc, containing all my main programmes
and email had died completely!
Luckily,
I keep all my photographic and web site data on a network
drive, and backed up in two other places but I still had
to format the main hard disc and reinstall all the software.
Other than a photographing the 'Pie Man' in town on Saturday
morning and nipping into a shop to buy my sister, Marilyn
a birthday card on the way back home, reinstalling the software
took the whole of the day, plus of course, I lost all my
emails and sent in news items as they were on the 'c:' drive
for speed of access.
I
was very much not a happy bunny on Saturday. Several people
had sent in news items during the week and I lost the lotl.
I have retrieved some of them from those people I could
immediately remember but my apologies if you are one of
those who sent something in which I have lost completely.
Please resend and I will publish next week, if it's not
too late.
On
the amusing side - well it is amusing to me, on reflection:
I don't know if you have installed Windows XP from scratch
but when you do, the installation process comes up with
a box where you have to fill in the computer's name and
description. I named the computer 'WyenotNews1' as it was
before but, out of sheer frustration and anger, in the 'description'
box I typed in the first sentence which came to mind: 'f---ing
piece of PC World sh-t'. Without really thinking about all
of the places that information might show up.
Now
- every time I log off from the network, the computer gives
me a choice of two great options: ' Would you like to switch
user or would you like to turn off this f---ing piece of
PC World sh-t?'
I
can't wait until next time I have to register something
from PC World on-line!
On
the positive side - I was able to rebuild the system
by installing just the operating system, so the computer
is now clean, without all the cruddy programs that PC World
decide you must have with your new computer - which run
in the background until you take them out in 'msconfig'
and then uninstall them. The machine now runs at virtually
double the speed it did when it was brand new, just two
months ago!
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