Fix my computer

I spoke to computerdad yesterday about my dvd drive problem. He said that the drive I have there is part of the computer, not a component that can be switched out. The computer is no longer under warranty, so I either have to pay Dell a lot of money or else put duct tape over that drive and forget it ever existed. I can survive without DVDs. If I find I’m missing the drive terribly, I can purchase an external USB connected DVD drive. Problem solved-ish.

I mentioned to him that I’m surprised that the computer is still running slowly, even though I just overhauled the whole thing. He said it’s probably because of the amount of RAM I have, and that I can purchase more memory and install it and that should take care of my problem. Time to roll up my sleeves … and my checkbook ….

I forgot one thing.
My DVD drive wasn’t working before the computer overhaul, and it still isn’t working. So it seems to be a hardware problem. I guess that means I have to fork over the money for a new drive. Ugh. So I’m not quite done yet.

I did it. I finally fixed it.
Wait. Let’s try that again.
We. We did it. We fixed it. I had Irieman’s help. He gave me six hours of his time. I am so grateful.

I didn’t want to spend the money for an up-and-up version of XP. Sure, I’m cheap: I hate the thought of spending $150 for anything; but I used to have the disk that came with my computer for this very situation. Over the course of four changes of residence since acquiring the computer, the disk is nowhere to be found. So I went the sly route and borrowed an installation disk from my dad’s friend. I actually borrowed two disks from him; one was a full-on XP installation disk and the other was a Dell start-up disk. I was a little worried that these disks wouldn’t work, especially because I had heard that there’s some magic code that the program looks for before it’ll work. Pakssuggested that I would only need to use the code on the label of my computer, and that if I couldn’t find that there are ways to extract the code from my computer using software.

I could see the label code just fine, but I used an extraction program as well. The extraction program gave me a different code. Weird.

So I arrived at Irieman’s pad and we started out by erasing everything from my harddrive. No worries, I backed up my entire C drive the night before. Then we tried to reinstall XP, but the program didn’t like the code(s) we provided. We tried my label code, the extraction program’s code, Irieman’s computer’s code, codes we found on line. Nothing. Ugh. Same problem with the other disk. I was bracing myself to either spend a lot of money or be without a working computer for some time. But Irieman told me that Windows just came out with Vista which works so-so on new computers and poorly on old ones, and I won’t even find XP on the shelves anymore. I felt totally defeated.

We actually had a third installation disk that we tried a bit, but with worse results than the other two. Irieman had a Dell startup disk similar to the one from my dad’s friend, but his was XP home and both from Dad’s friend was XP professional. The label on the bottom of my computer said XP home next to the code, so I figured the XP home disk would be the best option, but my computer refused to even look at that disk. It wouldn’t even get to the screen asking for the code, before it reached that stage it would deny the disk.

I was ready to pack up and call it quits, but then I tried one more thing using the XP home disk. I pushed one button different during the initial boot, and suddenly everything on the screen was different than the other attempts. My computer took a while – maybe 20 minutes or so – to figure out if it liked the disk or not, but once it decided it liked it it really liked it. Perhaps the program read the code within my computer because it never asked for that product key code. It just installed itslef.

We had to spend a lot of time after that with the various XP updates and installing anti-spyware and anti-virus stuff. That took a while, but I was patient. Now, I am very happy to report, I have a happily-functioning computer.

I hope to never have to do this again!

I’ve purchased a 100-gig external drive and I’ve backed up all my stuff. That felt a little redundant – the backing up part; of course I backed up my photos and documents, but I didn’t want to forget something that I didn’t realize I still needed, so I backed up my whole C drive. Doesn’t that just mean I’ve backed up my viruses? Ah well, I.M. can clear that up for me when I get to his place.

I’ve acquired a copy of Windows and Microsoft Office to reinstall on my machine after it wakes up from it’s brain transplant. My dad’s somewhat-sketchy friend set me up with the disks; I’m crossing my fingers that this’ll work.

And I’ve gotten I.M. to agree to take me into his home and share his expertise with me for a couple of hours. He’ll get me started on the process, he’ll assuage my fears, he’ll tell me what needs to be done next.

So it looks like I’m on my way. The only thing I forgot to do was go to church this morning. I am truly intimidated by this process. Please cross your 43Fingers for me and send a little prayer to the computer gods …..

One thing that has stopped me from revamping the computer before now is that I don’t have my Windows XP disk anymore. I don’t want to pay a lot of money to buy another one. Dad to the rescue. He’s giving me a copy of one. Super.

But wait … will a copy work? Isn’t there some kind of code that has to accompany the disk to prove it’s not a clone? Argh!

I have two weeks off of work, and I’ve been allowed to borrow a little 3-gig flash drive. I think it’s time to overhaul this old machine of mine.

My computer is wacky. It keeps messing up in the most absurd ways. I think that really what needs to happen is for me to save everything that I want saved and then give my computer a severe case of amnesia. I just don’t want to blow my budget on a new version of Windows. Looking for alternate options …..