Wednesday, June 01, 2011

Microsoft kills computers

Ah, went into Bathurst today, took laptop with Windows 7 Home Premium (har har har, hardy har) to my friendly computer techie.

"Why is my laptop computer having canniptions?" ask innocent me.
"Ah," sez he, " have you downloaded 'service pack1'?
"Dunno," sez me, "is it an 'automatic' update?"

"Mmm," he sez, "quite a few computers seem to have been killed by 'Win 7 SP 1"

So, after several hours, and a complete 'reformat' in which i lost everything already installed and stored - now have a 'cleanskin', operationally restored laptop. Cost me $60-00 (and yep, he is a very generous techie).

Did ask if I could send the bill to Microsoft.
IF ONLY.
(at this point they owe me $460-00 - not counting the $800-00 laptop with Windows 7 Home Premium installed))

Meanwhile, am scrabbling around trying to figure out how many pics have been lost, and how many are stored elsewhere - or. indeed, if i can 'access' them.

[the previous post "trust" was also prompted by this sort of stuff. Do I 'trust' Microsoft's 'updates'? Absolutely not. Now, also,  have an ancient  'backup' (or 'backdated') computer with XP Pro ($400-00)  - not the laptop -  that actually reads and recognises a couple of 'ancient' independent 'hard drive storages'.  So far so good - and am seriously considering Ubuntu].

[additional update: It looks as if there is a serious 'conflict' between Win7 and the "Zoombrowser" (which, by the way, is one of the best 'photo organisation') software provided on the disc by Canon after i bought the Canon SX30 recently - but that wasn't the only one. ].

10 comments:

Vest said...

Free advice: Email, chris@bowyer.net.au,My son, tell him you are my friend and destitute, should you become desperate for advice. do you have skype? if so it could be a help.

Davoh said...

Nah, Vestie - i live in the "outbacks" (wot? A few hundred miles from Sydney CBD?). Internet connect via satellite. Skype not supported. I could, via a Telstra 'dongle' but need the laptop, and take it a few 100 yards up the hill. Ah, the marvels of 21st century technology .. heh, heh, heh.

Davoh said...

Destitute?? Errrm, not quite there, yet.

lemmiwinks said...

As you've discovered, windows (other than those which provide light and fresh air) is shit. XP was slightly less malevolent, but pretty thorough rubbish all the same.

Vista (Windows7 beta tested by millions of hapless morons who had to have the "newest and bestest" or had no choice because, under pressure from Microsoft, that's all manufacturers were offering on new computers) is not oft mentioned by Microsoft. I think they would rather forget it ever existed.

Your techie friend is, indeed very generous. He probably feels sorry for you as another indentured slave to microsoft, hence the small (in terms of actual time vs $ per hour) charge.

Do more than consider Ubuntu, Davo, download the ISO and make the CD (if that's too hard or a prohibitively large file, email me your postal address and I'll pop one in the mail for you). I'm partial to Ubuntu myself, and you can try before you install by booting it as a "live" CD. Though it's slow because it has to read from the CD it will confirm that it works on your hardware.

We are a Fedora (the linux distribution, not the hat, although both are good) "shop" here, but I still prefer Ubuntu on those infrequent occasions when I use a computer at home.

For the truly adventurous you could make a "hackintosh" and run Mac OS X on your PC. But it requires a lot of stuffing about (is illegal) and I wouldn't recommend it even though OS X is quite delicious.

John Myste said...

In the future, if you need to reinstall the operating system, at least create an image of the drive first.

If it will not boot, you can buy a new drive, install the OS on it, and then buy a drive enclosure, and read from the drive with the corrupt OS. That little adventure will cost around 80.00 American Dollars, which is not that bad for a rich man such as yourself.

I keep a mirrored drive at all times and try to reimage once per month. If anything bad happens, I plug the backup in and I am ready to go.

I only use laptops.

Now that I wrote this, I just thought, you also have to have some kind of imaging software, which may be another 70.00 or something. Maybe it is getting expensive.

lemmiwinks said...

P.S. It goes without saying, since you are using windows, but you absolutely must have an anti-virus program. AVG free edition is pretty good, and Malwarebytes anti-malware is good for cleaning up the spyware and other crap which you are liable to collect.

The primary use of anti-virus programs on linux/Mac is for alerting your windows using friends that they have a problem after they send you an infected file (which can't operate on your non-windows computer). ;-)

lemmiwinks said...

John, Clonezilla is a neat little imaging/cloning utility that handles a wide variety of file systems including NTFS. I use it here at work quite a bit.

John Myste said...

I second the endorsement of Malwarebytes for spyware and AVG for virus protection. Together, I suspect they are good as Norton or most things on the market.

I have cleaned many computers in safemode using Malwarebytes.

Both are available for download at CNET.com

Davoh said...

um. Thankyou for all that information Lemmi and J. Myste .. but please remember that i still operate from 1967 editions of the Chamber's and Oxford dictionaries. Book/printed thingos, with pages that can easily flick through (and can also read by sun/candle/torchlight if necessary).

Most of the above words/advice are/is completely incomprehensible, to me.

Not to worry, will try to decipher ..

Davoh said...

.. and yep Lemmi, would email you - but can't find an address. Email me (found in profile)with 'your' email .. and will tell you my name and home address .. heh.