Ok so here I am on my phone typing an email again. The laptop will not start up. Several changes were made by a MS support tech a few days ago and it seemed to help but Kaspersky would no longer complete a scan (crashing to a BSOD halfway through) so I contacted Kaspersky and they gave me instructions and I followed the ones that the computer would allow (it blocked me from doing some of the things) and I saw the MS tech turned off some Kaspersky features so I turned them back on and the laptop is not recovering from the last BSOD and I am trying everything I know now. It gets past the boot to the password screen and then accepts the password and then hangs after that before the desktop appears. Critical Process Error. I tried diagnostics and that said the hard drive failed. I tried finding safe mode but I couldn't find it so far. I tried repair a few times and that didn't work. I found a disk repair and that is running right now. It said it could take an hour.
Meanwhile. I ate too much pizza and chocolate and starch and did not take the laxatives and other supplements this week because the bowel movements have been pain and blood free and I am paying for it now as I had my first hard BM in a few weeks just now and so there is a spot of blood but no pain which is great news. I still must remember to take the laxative and the other supplements daily at least until I see the GI specialist on the 19th.
So I get back to the laptop and it is ready for the password and I enter it and it brings up the desktop but it then crashes again before fully loading the desktop and try try again.
This time it was a Kernel Data Inpage Error. Then again with a Critical Process Error.
I am now trying a system restore from two days ago before I did any of the things Kaspersky suggested. I am hoping the hard drive did not fail so completely that this might get me reconnected to the laptop so I can trouble shoot with tech support tomorrow or Monday. My alternative will be taking it into Best Buy and giving them $80 to troubleshoot or sending it to Dell to have them install a new hard drive ( which means a complete clean drive with Windows 7 which might be a good thang except that tons of stuff will need to be downloaded and installed and updated. Another alternative is asking if Best Buy can do that and finally the last resort is buying a new laptop which will cut a month or two off my ability to keep the car without an income. It may be time to explore any benefits I might be eligible for and in a couple of months if nothing changes applying for a minimum wage job somewhere.
Holding out hope for the system restore to work tonight.
So I stopped at Wawa and got a panini and long John and hit chocolate and two bags of m&ms and I am on the second bag of m&ms which is all that she is keeping me from freaking out about the laptop right now.
System restore said it failed. An u specified Error. 0x8007025d
Dammit.
An hour later I've tried everything I can find on this laptop and we have reached a point of repeatable error at the same point as the desktop tries to complete loading. The Maharaja is trying to download a diagnostic boot disk for me so I can try bypassing the hard drive and if he gets that done I will try that next. All signs point to a hard disk failure that cannot be repaired or overcome as it has been for that last few months. I wonder if computer issues were why Jackson bought her new computer and gave me this one. Sigh.
Well, after almost two hours of trying, The Maharaja just gave up on downloading the Boot Disk and diagnostic tools he was raving about. I may have milked the freebie laptop for all it could give (thank you Jackson) and it is time to spend some money on computer internet access. Instead of going to softball practice in the morning I will be computer repair shopping and possible computer shopping.
Will this be the last time I go down
Will I finally reach that point if no return
Will there be no recovery from this frown
Will there be no healing from this burn
The challenges of living are nothing new to me
I've made decisions to avoid the easiest roads
Doing what I feel is right matters more than easy
Sometimes I choose to carry the heaviest loads
Most of the time it is to help someone else
Because I love the feeling of helping others
It's not that I enjoy denying myself
It's just that I believe in caring for my brothers.
And then, after searching and trying to download the Boot Disk and diagnostic software he had raved about since he got home and finally giving up because it would not download and he couldn't find the disk, The Maharaja said good night and good luck and I resigned myself to having no computer and started typing my lament on the phone. It took some figuring out, but after about a half hour of exploring the disk features, I found myself writing this into the blogger box for the brief blog (with added babble here, as usual):
Well, let's see if this works. All signs indicate that the hard drive finally failed beyond repair. I spent several hours trying every fix available and finally gave up. Then The maharaja found a boot disk and I booted into Windows 95 from the CD Boot Disk and am learning my way around, figured out how to connect to the net, and here we are. I feel like I traveled back in time and am using an older version of Opera (Opera/9.80 (Windows NT 5.1; U; en) Presto/2.10.289 Version/12.02 Build 1578 Platform Win32 System Windows XP XHTML+Voice Plug-in not loaded) and was able to access my folders on the external drives and email and while Blogger says this is an error because this is an unsupported browser, I shall attempt to upload this entry in spite of the warnings and odd appearance.
Earlier today I slept most of the day as I was awake all night. The body and mind are not getting the rest they need and it showed in the digestive system. Tinman called and invited me for dinner so i headed up to his new house and caught up with some old friends, then we played cards (Old Maid) with his four year old daughter and then, after she went to bed, Harpo, Tinman, and I played Spades. I headed home to see if a rest would help the laptop and after several hours, accepted defeat. We come to the save by The Maharaja's Boot Disk and now, we shall push the empty box where the "Publish" button ought to be and see what happens.
Hope springs eternal, even amidst the challenges.
Narf. :)
As we see, the "Publish" button worked. I lost the large monitor as it seems Windoes 95 or the boot disk does not have graphics software that can handle dual monitors (unless I just need to search the Boot Disk more and figure it out). Both external hard drives are working so I did not lose anything but the programs on the laptop hard drive so it's the same thing as starting over on a new computer or on a new hard drive if I choose to do the replacement hard drive option for $149 through Dell or whatever Best Buy might charge..
So life survives and so do I, which brings us to this entry you are reading. It's been a very long night and a very long day and a very long week and month and year. The challenges just continue to mix it up with surprising new challenges just when I start thinking I am adjusting to and dealing with the challenges as they are.
Working in Windows 95 is a trip. Some part of me loves the simplicity and stability. Another part of me mourns my poverty and stresses over the clif-hanger life I created for myself this past year and maybe ever since I started making decisions for myself. I am not sure what will happen when I shut down and reboot, but those experiments are next as the sun has been up a while this body and mind desperately need sleep and rest.
I hope you are enjoying this roller coaster ride I loosely call my life (one of us shoud lol). I hope you are enjoying yourse too, even if it's full of challenges or misery, because it is the best we can do, Enjoy.
Narf :)
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