I Want to Do This for a Living Why?

[perzephone]

Oh yeah, $85 an hour... Rob's computer took a major dump day before yesterday. It's been heading that way - either the mobo is bad or his video card is dying, or something. To 'troubleshoot' he ran out & bought a stick of RAM on sale... Apparently, his motherboard didn't like it & started beeping. So he diddled around w/the RAM & got Windows to boot at least - but it booted to the sign-on screen - with no user to click on. By Ctrl+Alt+Del'ing, I got it to a regular Windows log-in box & tried good old 'Admin'... & was told I couldn't log on due to account restrictions. Well, his computer at least has a POST screen so I managed to get into the Recovery Console & attempted a fix I found online involving backing up & repairing the registry. Windows booted, finally, with no log-in screen, but it seemed to have been lobotomized - no drivers, no programs, no nothing. So I tried the 'Repair' function on the WinXP disc - and it formatted the freaking computer. Gee, thanks, Bill, I don't think I could have done it better myself. So, hours & hours of WoW update downloading, WinXP updates, driver updates, porn, music & the errata that is Rob's digital life - all gone to wherever unrecoverable data goes.

Well, I got Windows re-installed, got his mobo drivers reinstalled, his basic video card driver installed... and could not, for the life of me, get the computer back on-line. Even got Cox to send me a guy out (I've asked for guys from Cox before with no success, but since this problem involved teh internets, they finally complied with my request) & he got the computer to tell him there was no driver for the Ethernet card & Win wasn't recognizing it for whatever reason. So we went out & bought a new card w/its own drivers. (If you need a new Ethernet card, CompUSA has 'em on sale right now starting at $12.99 - half of what Office Depot's offering.)

Now, here's what pisses me off. Everytime my computer gets bumped off-line, I end up having to call Cox & talk to their computerized help system to get back on-line. I mean, every single freaking time - power outage, call Cox. Unplugged the router - call Cox. Unplugged the modem - call Cox. I can do all the steps on my own - cycle the power on the router & modem, release & renew my ipconfig, reboot, reboot, reboot - all to no avail. However, after all the mucking around we've done inside Rob's computer, I had Win install the driver for the Ethernet card & plugged the RJ-45 cable into the router and voila' - he was on-fucking-line. I didn't even have to go through unplugging the router & installing it. Nooooo. Bastard.

Anyway, I'm scared about the drumming class I re-signed up for. I'm going to be in a room full of youthful, artistic & creative people feeling like a complete lump of sun-dried buffalo chips. I want to take it, but then again, I really want to drop it yet again & see if there's an online art appreciation class or something instead.

I also have a gynecologist appointment tomorrow. Heigh-ho, Speculum, away!

Comments

cox sucks cock-badly-

[spyral-weaver73.livejournal.com]

our net has been dropping like crazy and you can only get ahold of a tech 'when you are online'..wtf is up with that??

so we do talk to them, they got us doing all this crap and the net still drops sometimes for days!..We are probably going back to DSL..at least it -never- dropped our connections!

Re: cox sucks cock-badly-

[perzephone.livejournal.com]

It's probably where you live, sad to say. We always used to have cable problems when we were over there off of Trop & Decatur. Being close to Summerlin has its fringe benefits - newer, upgraded cabling on the main lines.

It just had me beating my head on the wall, really. I think next semester I'm going to take a Linux class or two so we can be free of Microsoft's eternal bondage.