My comoputer is broken

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Tdarcos
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My comoputer is broken

Post by Tdarcos »

Part 1 of 3

You may have noticed the following at the bottom of my postings:

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Sent from a mobile tablet

Here is the reason, from the new—user page for my temporary Wikipedia account "Ip address 50 78 75 149" (that being the permanent Ip address this facility has).

This is the (temporary) username for account of [[user:rfc1394|Paul Robinson]] because;
# My computer is broken (the [[Operating system]] failed), the recovery partition doesn't work, and I needed a separate recovery disc.
# I am waiting for a replacement, expected by Friday, February 26, 2021.
# I am using a mobile tablet; and
# The password for my regular account is in a configuration file that Firefox has left stored on my computer, that I can't get to until I have another Windows 10 computer to build a recovery disc.

Morw details later, breakfast just arived, I want to eat it while it's still cold.


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Sent from a mobile tablet
Last edited by Tdarcos on Thu Feb 25, 2021 3:43 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Alan Francis wrote a book containing everything men understand about women. It consisted of 100 blank pages.

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Tdarcos
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Re: My comoputer is broken

Post by Tdarcos »

Part 2 of 3

tet's go back about 4 or 5 days to last Friday. My computer is a Lenovo ThinkCentre M82, which I bought a while ago; I have files on here I created dated from 2015 that I don't think were migrated, so I figure I bought it then. The BIOS reports its release date as.09/17/2013, and was probably in service for a year or so before being sold as used. This is common in some businesses where they replace computers every year with the latest model.

I think this has about a 3 ghz processor. It came with 4 gb of ram, Windows 10 Professional, and a 250gb hard drive. $125 on Overstock.Com with free shipping. It was just too slow for my taste with only 4gb of memory, so I rolled over to Micro Center (get it? I'm in a wheelchair so I don't walk over, I roll over) and purchased 12 gb of ram (3 sticks) and a 1tb hard drive. That was about $80, I think. To this day I don't know why, I only installed 1 stick even though it supports 4.With 8 gb it was nice and snappy.

The next section is a bit long, but it explains why there was an issue; yiu can skip the next 2 paragraphs if you're not interested.

Back in about 2015 when I had my first blindness incident, I had an idea for two books:
  1. Marnie, about a 15—year-old girl who ends up becoming Empress of a country on another planet; and
  2. Don't Break the Merger about the goings on at an electronics manufacturer after one of its founders dies, and the company has to be sold. There are two buyers: one como wants to keep the company intact and will even pay a premium, even redeeming the employees' stock options, and the other buyer, who simply wants the intellectual property, breaking it up for its assets, and is only paying about 1/2 of what the first company is offerring. However, the first company wants 100 days to do a due dilligence analysis of the company's value. If anything is wrong they can back out, in qhich cas the founders cash out and the employees don't get anything, so it's in everyone':s interest (the founders of the company will each get an extra $50 million if the first company finds their company has no disqualifying factors) to see that the merger take place.
While i couldn't see, I recorded my thoughts on the two stories using the only means I was capable of working; a video camera. I recorded hours of my thoughts as if the camera was an audio tape recorder, like a Dictaphone. I think I loaded the equivalent of about close to 4 full 16gb cards, the files comprise a whopping 60 gb of data on dozens of files. Probably should have converted them to MP3s as there's nothing on thl video, mostly pointed at whatever the camera was aimed at as I quoted story ideas, text of the story, and dialog, but I never did.

Anyway, after recovering my files and being anal retentive about backing them up, I found my backup copy (on the same disk; when I copied it, I didn't have a backup disc), which means I'm storing a duplicate 60gb of files in addition to two separate backups. One single copy on the disk (plus two backups on the other external drives) should be enough.

I needed to do something; my 1tb hard drive is down to about 135 gb free. So I "shift-delete" (select files, right-click, then click "delete" whule holding down the shift key) the duplicate files. This tells Windows Explorer to delete the files without copying them to the recycle bin. So now I'm back to a more reasonable 200gb or so free.

But I notuce the recycle bin has over 8gb of files in it. I figure if I didn't need to recover a file after about 2.1/2 months, I don't need it, I can delete everything in the recycle bin older than November 1. So I do. Or rather, I tried. Part-way through cleaning up the recycle bin, either the video quit or the computer died (meaning the operating system crashed; I almost never see the computer itself either hardware fault or spontaneously shut off) so I got someone to come by and restart my machine.

I see the CYAN SCREEN OF DEATH! This us a light blue screen with a frowny face, literally the text :)
followed by a message that the boot failed and I need to use the recovery disk, and if I don't have one, I need to contact the manufacturer, i.e. I'm fucked. This computer has a recovery partition, I thought, like it did back with Windows 95, if the boot fails, it will load the recovery partition automatically. But not this time. WHAT THE FUCK ARE THEY PU TTING IN A GODDAM RCOVERY PARTITIN OF 500 MEGABYTES ON THE HARD DRIVE IF YOU STILL NEED TO HAVE AN EXTERNAL BOOT DISK?

More later, lunch is here.

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Last edited by Tdarcos on Thu Feb 25, 2021 3:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Alan Francis wrote a book containing everything men understand about women. It consisted of 100 blank pages.

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Tdarcos
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Re: My comoputer is broken

Post by Tdarcos »

Part 3 of 3

So anyway, I can't recover my computer. I had, in fact, been thinkng about upgrading. Get a new (to me) refurbished computer, (Amazon uses the term "renewed") the way the one I have was. More memory, more disk space, and quite possibly a good-sized SSD for fast booting. I typically replaced my computer every two years or so but since I can't do upgrades — my days of "cracking a box" and replacing memory, a hard drive or a board are over — and I won't have the kind of money I did, I have to figure on something I can expect to keep as long as this one, i.e. five years.

That means a 3ghz or faster processor, quad core, at least 16gb of memory, a 2 tb hard drive, and an SSD of maybe 256 or 512 gb for faster boot-up time. It will also have to have VGA output as I don"t want to buy a new monitor (I think my current one is 27".) And it looks like it's just below my "threshhold of pain" of $400, in that there are some around $395 or less. Well, figuring sales tax at around $20 to $25, maybe I'd better go around $380 or so. Which means probably a 250 instead of a 512 gb SSD. So I see several models, and I can probably pick one, but I'll think about it.

Then, a couple days later, I have the fatal crash.[1] I'm able to talk my sister through doing a search on Amazon, and we're able to find one that's almost everything. Quad core, 3.1 ghz (that can be run faster but it's probably ok as-is). 16gb ram, 2tb hard drive, but the SSD is "only" 120gb. If I restrict that to software installs that must go on the same and put everything else on the 2tb I should be okay. The price with tax was $407.55 I think (I do remember $407 and change), and as soon as it arrives and I can set it up, I'll log onto my credit union's website and have them send her a check for $408 as that was easier to remenber.

Second thing I will do is create a recovery disc on an sd card and use it to restore my old computer, then I'll have two, the new one stacked above the old one, and I'll either hook them up to a KVM, or I'll install VNC and run one of them headless, accessing it through a window like I did with the 55 pound Macintosh tower computer I had a few years ago.

This now completes my story.


[1] I sometimes think maybe my current computer knew I was lookimg for a replacwment and decided to commit hari-kari. Or maybe Microsoft designs their operating systems to go bad after a few years as another method of forced upgtading. That's ridiculous, of course, computers can't think. (Or can they?)


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Casual Observer
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Re: My comoputer is broken

Post by Casual Observer »

Tdarcos wrote: Thu Feb 25, 2021 3:42 pmI have to figure on something I can expect to keep as long as this one, i.e. five years.
Jesus, just think of all the celebrities that are going to croak before your computer does.

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Flack
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Re: My comoputer is broken

Post by Flack »

Paul, with an external caddy you might be able to take the hard drive out of your old machine, connect it to the new computer, and copy over your old files. You might want to consider recording your future notes in audio format vs. video. Windows 10 comes with a free app called Voice Recorder that will let you record voice memos, or you could download and install Audacity which is also free. Finally, you really should consider backing up some of your files to the cloud. Google Drive and Mega each offer 15GB of free cloud storage. That would hold a lot of audio files when recorded at a reasonable sample/bitrate.
"I failed a savings throw and now I am back."

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Tdarcos
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Re: My comoputer is broken

Post by Tdarcos »

Flack wrote: Thu Feb 25, 2021 8:34 pm Paul, with an external caddy you might be able to take the hard drive out of your old machine, connect it to the new computer, and copy over your old files.
With my left hand unable to uncurl, and me unable to move, I think my days of opening a computer and working with the contents are probably over.
Flack wrote: Thu Feb 25, 2021 8:34 pmYou might want to consider recording your future notes in audio format vs. video. Windows 10 comes with a free app called Voice Recorder that will let you record voice memos,
Yes. I knew about voice recorder, the problem was I was effectively blind at the time. Everything was a blur, and I could not see a video screen well enough to manipulate a mouse or locate a program.
Flack wrote: Thu Feb 25, 2021 8:34 pm or you could download and install Audacity which is also free.
I've probably been using Audacity for more than five years. I have done the audio versions of the article Chess on Wikipedia, which, since it takes about an hour to read, I do a revision about every two years. If you look at the history, I've released three versions, all .ogg audio files. So I've been posting that audio file for at least six years, using Audacity.

UPDATE: I just looked myself, and the first recording of the article on Chess on Wikipedia was recorded in 2005, so I have been using Audacity for at least fifteen years! And the last recording was in 2016 so that's another thimg I need to redo once I get my new computer.
Flack wrote: Thu Feb 25, 2021 8:34 pmFinally, you really should consider backing up some of your files to the cloud. Google Drive and Mega each offer 15GB of free cloud storage. That would hold a lot of audio files when recorded at a reasonable sample/bitrate.
Wow, I did not know the free version allowed for 15 gb, I thougjt it was only five. Right now I have a backup of my (written) stories in a private repository on Github as well as backed up on both the 8tb drive I bought using the Amazon gift card Casual Observer sent me and on the 4tb I had originally sent you. But if they do offer 15gb free, I will definitely be taking advantage of them.

Aactually, Github repositories can be any size as long as no file exceeds 50mb, and if you install Git-LFS (large file storage) you can even have those. I created a repository with both the Intel and AMD x86 instruction set references, to provide "one stop shopping" for those wanting IA32 and xiy instruction set references.Intel's complete 10-volume x86-64 instruction set manual is over 5,000 pages and is about 55mb.

It being after 5, I have to figure my sister didn't get the computer on time and I won't get it until Mondsy.

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Flack
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Re: My comoputer is broken

Post by Flack »

Image
"I failed a savings throw and now I am back."

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AArdvark
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Re: My comoputer is broken

Post by AArdvark »

There's just no helping the guy

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Jizaboz
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Re: My comoputer is broken

Post by Jizaboz »

Let’s start a fundme for a new cyber hand replacement from the nearest ripperdoc.
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