You know that saying, "Don't break your arm, patting yourself on the
back!" Well. I almost did that. Not literally, of course. I was
celebrating the outsmarting of my new laptop, HIPPIE. He's an HP, having
replaced SHIBA the Toshiba, so long in the tooth she could have been a
saber-tooth vampire tiger.
HIPPIE came with Windows 10.
Not a fan. Too modern for me. The Pony set everything up for me on our
last visit. A few days ago, I tried to turn on HIPPIE, and got the
Scenic Ocean Cliff of Death. Not a black screen, mind you, or even a
blue screen. A Scenic Ocean Cliff scene. No cursor. No writing. No
symbols. After three tries at holding down the power button, and pushing
F1, and control-alt-delete...it finally came back on with the time and
date, along with the cursor, for me to click and get my log-in box. YAY,
me!
I thought HIPPIE might need updates, because I
hate updates, and blatantly ignore the selection of "install updates and
shut down" every time I shut down. So Tuesday I did that. I left HIPPIE
sitting on his TV tray stand in front of the big living room window,
plugged into the power supply, so he could update to his heart's
content. You'd think that would have satisfied him. But no.
Wednesday,
when I turned on HIPPIE, I got a black screen with the dot-circle
symbol chasing its tail. So I knew something was going on. Then I got a
blue screen that said updates were being installed, to LEAVE IT ALONE,
and that it might take a while. It took over an hour of a while. But
THEN business (and my pleasure) returned to normal for HIPPIE.
I had checked my blog, and read a couple others, and typed up a comment for blog buddy River.
When I hit the PUBLISH button, HIPPIE kept dwelling on that handshake.
You know, the thing the magical innernets do before loading a page. It
went on forever, and then I got a screen saying something about not
having clearance or something. A little more odd than when my innernets
go down. But that one came up on anything else I tried to load.
What
a coincidence! All those updates installed, and now my innernets are
gone! I sent a text to The Pony, because I know that on Wednesdays, he's
in classes from 8:30 a.m. to 5:45 p.m., with two breaks of three hours
each. Yeah. A good schedule-maker he is NOT. Anyhoo...when he carelessly
disregarded my momogram, I sent one to Genius. He's a working man, you
know, but it was nearing lunch time, and I thought he might see it.
Genius knows when there's panic in Momville. He responded forthwith.
"My
laptop updated for an hour. I was using it, then the internet
stopped. You know I'm a technology simpleton. Troubleshooting could not
find the problem. Except for an Ethernet unplugged thingy. Just a
coincidence, and my internet is down? Or something I can or need to fix?"
"Does internet work elsewhere?"
"My
phone shows an X on that fan-shaped thingy at the top. I haven't tried
New Delly yet. On the laptop connections, it showed Thevictorian Home as
open, but no internet. Okay, there's no internet on New Delly, either.
Should I go unplug something? Or try System Restore?"
"I
don't have any immediate ideas. You should always try to unplug and
replug the modem in the workshop, and the router at my desk. Don't do a
restore. That won't help."
"Okay. Desk first, then
workshop. A couple minutes, then plug in workshop first, then desk. But I
forget which thing it is in the desk. The bigger one, with flashing
lights, I think."
"Yes. The biggest one in the cabinet. It will have antennas coming out of it."
"Got it."
After
trekking around the basement with my mini flashlight to peer into the
cabinet under Genius's desk, and up into the rafters on the shelf in the
workshop...I accomplished my mission.
"It worked!!! At least for New Delly. I'm not turning on that laptop devil until tomorrow."
Let the record show that here I inserted a purple horned devil emoji in the sentence, and a bloated yellow smiley face afterward.
"Glad it worked! Less glad to see you've discovered emojis." Which he followed with a weeping smiley face.
"It comes up unrequested. Along with 'Thanks' and THIS:" [Which was a giant yellow thumbs-up.] "You are lucky I chose the lesser of two evils. Though I'm sure 'Thanks' would have sufficed."
See there? Genius is trying to keep me back in the olden days. B/E. Before Emoji.
I'm not celebrating just yet. We'll see how things go tomorrow morning after using HIPPIE. A literal broken arm from a premature celebration would hinder my internet-repair routine.
Always shut stuff down and then turn on, works more than anything. Then to seem like you know what you are doing, call it a "Restart". If that does not work, smack and or bang it a bit, if that still doesn't work,I go to the geek squad...you are lucky, you raised your own geek squad (and I mean geek in the modern nicest way possible.) If that doesn't work, there are always dirty water cocktails.
ReplyDeleteI hate those updates as well, but they are very hard to put off.
I would have loved to shut stuff down, if only I'd had a cursor! Or even that dot-circle chasing its tail thingy. Then at least I'd have known what was going on, so I could have set it aside to do its thing.
DeleteAt least it wasn't full of ANTS!
On plug and remove the battery, or hold the on off button/switch until it shuts down completely (takes 4-10 seconds of holding)
DeleteI never thought of the battery removal, but I DID hold down the power button to finally turn it off. I was hoping to shock it into normal mode with the F1 and control/alt/delete.
DeleteOMG! I foolishly found a great deal on Amazon Prime the other day and convinced SWMBO that she should replace her 9 year old Toshiba with it. It arrived (free of shipping and in 2 days!!) today and we began to try to learn it. Much shrieking and yelling and even, saints preserve us, cursing later I got it running like a clock. And not one of those old grandfather clocks either. Gawd, I hate progress.
ReplyDeleteI think the lesson I've learned is that you can't beat a TOSHIBA! At least an 8-10 years old Toshiba. Worked like a charm until the day it died.
DeleteProps to you for getting that new one going. You must be the Laptop Curser. Which I guess makes joeh the Laptop Smacker. Different techniques, but satisfying results from both.
I get that same scenic ocean screen, right after the blue screen with the dots chasing in a circle thing. I just wait until the usual icons appear, don't know why it takes so long now, but when the icons are there I press "enter" and my password window pops up and then I'm good to go. It's all so slow now though. It could be because the streets around here are having NBN cable laid down (National Broadband Network).
ReplyDeleteYour updates took so long because you ignored them forever, and after downloading, they usually don't install until you start up again.
The "ethernet unplugged" thing is most often something going on at your provider's end not your end, although switching modems off and on doesn't hurt and can often work.
Both my HIPPIE and New Delly are slower now, over the last few weeks. Of course, my conspiracy theory mind says it's because of so much government spying. They're probably not messing with yours, though!
DeleteAt least I've stopped getting "logged off from another location." That used to drive me crazy when I was in the middle of something.
I know that the very first installation The Pony did took a long time, and the next morning, a bunch of updates slowed me down. So I put them off for a long time. I guess I bit off my nose to spite my face!
That ethernet message is the one I get most often when my internet is down, and Genius's advice is always the modem. Even though I don't really know what a modem is. I just follow his instructions, and now I can remember them.
You may need to "Defrag" your computer. It should be done periodically automatically but sometimes I have to kick off the process. No, I don't know what it is or does, frees up space or something, Mrs. C tells me to do it and it does speed up the computer...pretty sure your experts can talk you through it.
DeleteHey! I did that once a long time ago, on an older computer! Of course I don't remember how. I'm sure my own personal geek squad can remind me how to do it. It gets rid of fragments of files, I think.
DeleteI know New Delly needs de-fragging, but HIPPIE is so new...it surely must be government snooping! Says the Val who warned her mom that our calls were being listened to for years, and TURNED OUT TO BE RIGHT!
Yep, I was thinking last night that de-fragging would be a great idea, I haven't done it in over a year.
ReplyDeleteDe-fragmenting is when the computer finds all the randomly "used and shoved back anywhere" files and puts them all back in the order they're supposed to be. If done regularly the process doesn't take all that long and you can program your computer to do it at a set time and date each month If you've neglected the defragging it might take an overnight run to get done.
There can't be too much on HIPPIE yet, and I'm leery of risking my connection again. I don't trust technology to do the right thing!
DeleteI am so computer illiterate. Hope you are up and running. Well not you, but your whiz bang.
ReplyDeleteSo far, so good. Since Wednesday.
Delete