Yesterday's Weapons Forums

A small vent of my recent computey troubles...

I was happily surfing yesterday afternoon when the screen went blank. Couldn't start back up - "no disc drive". I knew Win 7 wasn't supported anymore but had drug my feet getting Win 10.

I figured Win 7 had bonked so I looked around to find I needed $139 to buy Win 10 for my antique laptop. Nah.

Called a local fellow who works on computeys and sells refurbs to find he hadn't any laptops in stock. Nothing for it at that point but a trip to Wally.

I described my trouble, and he said the hard drive had died - probably forever. So I took it out & dropped it by his place on my way to look for a new one.

Wally had a few on sale, and I got one for $250. Stopped back to find there was no resurrecting my hard drive and no charge since all he did was plug it into a meter.

I'm very resistant to change & figured switching to Win 10 would be an ordeal, but not that bad so far. I'll download Microsoft Security and Anvi to keep Chinese virus away. Then start deleting stuff I really don't want or need.

Any tips? On a scale from 1 to 10 of computey ability, mine doesn't even make the needle move.

I must be an anachronism. SW

well that makes two of us , in near every aspect , im still clinging to my Vista and its not supported either - meanwhile my newer computer with Win 10 on it sits across the room , ive barley messed with it so far , i keep sayin things like this HP has a bigger better screen , extra features a nice base and im used to it , the sony and Win 10 - thats just too much change in a single move ,

we upgraded to Win 10 at work a year ago and im finally getting comfortable with it - but it had its moments of frustration in adjustment and im having lots of issues with adobe there ,

The laptop I'm on was a 30 year award from work. It had shipped with 9, and I did the upgrade myself. It took me the better part of a week to complete a task that takes the IT guys at work less than an hour.

It takes a while to find things on the new layout. The search window down by the start button works well for finding needed files. I didn't start up cortana. I have enough of a drain on memory just coming here.

Of importance is doing the regular disc maintenance tasks~ be sure to have virus protection of some kind. Since I paid enough for the up-grade, I'm using windows defender which seems to work well. Use the disc defragmenter and disc clean up operations at least once a week, and clear browser history the same way to prevent your drive from crawling.

Personally, I think the upgrade is all in microsoft's favor. Videos ads self launch quite easily on this platform. I still watch what I click on...

Be sure to positively identify what you are deleting before doing so. Some programs with weird names are actually vital to the operation of the platform. Most of the b/s stuff on the platform requires starting a program- which I generally avoid.

Regards,

Doc Sharptail

The saga continues... all is well with the Win 10 laptop. Next plan - since this machine hasn't a CD drive - was to get my downstairs desktop up & running again since it runs my printer/scanner/copier.

The fault said, "low system battery". After considerable google-fu, I discovered there's an actual battery on the motherboard. So for $1.79
I had one and even for me, it popped right in.

But. System won't boot up. Now to try & find that problem. It's a 2007 vintage Dell 390. When it said system battery, I had a mental image of a tiny car battery.

I had another old laptop running XP & that's plugged into the printer. Tomorrow I'll load the Canon photo scanner... maybe. SW

If I remember correctly from the gateway desktop, you have to be on house hold current with the power switch on the back in the on position before doing a memory battery change. If you can't get it as far as safe mode start you are gonna need help....

Regards

Doc Sharptail

Well, this is a $50 refurb I got from new egg so I'm not going to get too excited about it. My XP laptop runs the printer/scanner just fine. Now to load the negative scanner & root through my neg files. SW

I got a Canon scanner. Don't recall just what it cost, but it wasn't an arm & leg. I really need to go through my negs again & post a few pics. SW

i quit the darkroom when chemistry was canceled - i also lost my darkroom when i moved out of my iowa house back in the 80s , sold my enlarger and development equipment , then my camera and lenses went to my niece ,

i did upgrade to a digital camera back in the early days of this forum , i get that the digital age adds so much more but ive not ventured that far into it yet , ive had my downs with multiple photobucket crash and revisions , i like the sites that allow direct imports , be interested in knowing more of the negative printer ?