Sunday, June 2, 2013

Finally )(*&(&_)(*&^(%^__*(*(*)&*)&) - almost - done

The blooming thing was pissing me off yesterday.  All the things I knew to do to find the reformat the computer option were ending up with nothing.  After trying endlessly, I finally went online.  Guess I should have done that in the first place, but I didn't think they would make it so blooming difficult to find how to format the partition.  Well, turns out, Windows 7 has a program that you access IN Windows.  I've never seen or heard of that before - but will certainly remember it the next time I have to do this.

Well whatever.  After I finally figured that out, I then moved on with fresh installation.  It was after getting fresh Windows 7 on my computer that I remembered that I would need the ASUS CD - for the ASUS motherboard - to get the network adapter.  Well, I keep all my CD's in one of 2 places so they are easily findable.

I spent 2 hours looking for that blooming CD. I finally gave up and just got on my laptop to get my stuff done online and then went to bed.  Enough exasperation for one day, but I was laying there thinking gee, I'm going to spend my whole vacation without a working desktop computer.  I got up early this morning - around 5:30 and came out with fresh resolve to find that CD. I do NOT throw away software CD's, it's simply something I don't do.  I went through every freaking drawer and couldn't find it.

I sat down and thought about it for a while.  I must have put it somewhere safe so it wouldn't get scratched up and destroyed.  I saw a pile of CD's that I thought were blanks.  Picked the whole pile up and sure enough: ASUS software CD, happily packed inside one of those cases for safekeeping. Dumb me.  I did find the video driver disc, another thing I would have to have and installed that.  Well, got all that done and then started the process of installing everything else.  Lots of "everything else" that you have to do once you get online.  Avast; Spybot; Glary Utilities first up at bats.  Spy and malware protection plus a utility to easily clean up your hard drive without having to click on a bunch of stuff - that would be Glary, it's free and it works swimmingly well.

Now?  I am processing a whitelist on Spybot.   Spybot just blocked me from going to a site that I have been on before that it says has "malicious" software awaiting me.  Realllllly?  Well that's interesting.  I don't know if I had an old version of Spybot on before or what, cause' it never blocked me from going there before.  It gave me the option of continuing on, which I just clicked off.  Perhaps that is where I was getting the problems from.

Well, there it is. Problems I was having with my computer that I could not fix are now gone.  How those problems arose, I have no idea.  Some of it was very annoying, especially this thing where I would start to type and nothing would happen.  I would have to keep typing for a while before it would start to show up on the screen.  If nothing else good came out of this, THAT in ITSELF was worth all this trouble.

Mark just walked in complaining about the heat and said it's 103 degrees outside already.  I had serious doubts of that, it cooled down pretty good last night and it's only 9:40 am, probably not heating up that fast this early. It's only 93 degrees outside but looking at today's forecast? WOW!! 109 forecast high temp!! YIKES!

I was about to have several herds of cows when I went to my Photobucket account and could not find all those pics I uploaded yesterday anywhere on there.  Click click click click until I found a file named "BEN-PC".  Yes!! Safely stored on Photobucket, all the pics I really wanted to save - quite a few of them actually - very relieved.  Eveyone was telling me to just use an external hard drive. Well, if any of my files are infected, then it will just be transferred to that hard-drive and then back to my fresh copy of Windows and then back to square 1!  No thanks.

I'm taking a break from church today.  I just plain didn't feel like going, which is hardly a good excuse, I guess, but it's my excuse regardless.  And no, I'm not taking a "vacation from God".

Anyway, now that I have this thing up and running - maybe a few minor quirks to deal with but otherwise good to go - I'm going to go outside and get some stuff done just before the melting, 109 heat comes here and then?  I won't be going outside to do ANYTHING!

G'day.

ben


5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well Ben, the trick is to back up your photos and files on an external hard drive BEFORE they get infected, not after.

I have really become a believer in the E drives as a backup, and make sure I keep a running list of all the files I update and every two weeks, the new stuff gets backed up.

I now have 45,000 photos, most irreplaceable and many of them very warm memory evoking. These are backed up on dvd's as well. I've got a lot of photos on photobucket, but I do not like their new format nor the idea they can use anything I put up for any purpose whatever without my permission, which I give them when I put stuff there. fi n

BenB said...

Yeah, well I may look into getting an external hard drive, but I have other priorities first. I still have yet to get that dash-mounted camera-recorder and that is a bit higher on the list than a hard drive. The driving around these parts just gets worse with time and the cut-offs are so close now in many instances it's a wonder I can get the truck slowed down enough in time to avoid a collision.
I think I have about 2,000 photos total. But I haven't been all over the world as you have and I would have to guess you must have a lot of photos from all over the planet, so I can understand your desire to make sure that they are double backed up. Especially putting them on CD's - but if they are that important to you I wouldn't keep them at my house, I would be putting them in a safety deposit box or something.

BenB said...

I also think I am going to have some of those pics developed into actual paper photos. Just the ones that really hold special value/sentimental value to me.

Anonymous said...

A whole lot of my recent time has been doing the opposite...taking print photographs and scanning them and then actually shredding them. Some I was able to foist off on my sister. My parents did a wonderful job of keeping albums of photos, with white ink, dates, names, places etc. Prob came when the pix came loose from the page.

BenB said...

Well, I lost all of my print photos during that house fire. I got a few of my son recently from my ex and my mom. I just don't have any of that stuff anymore. It's cool to have everything stored electronically, but I still like paper prints as well of at least some of my favorite photos that I have collected since that fire.

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