Remember how much I hate my computer?

[JoitheArtist]

It died. Rather dramatically. It locked down about 6 times on Saturday, and finally ceased booting up Windows. Now when I turn it on, it tries to boot Windows, and shuts itself off again. I'm gonna try a Vista disk to see if I can get it to reboot from that, but I think it's pretty much gone. I was internetless for all of the long weekend!!!

And of course, it had to go at a time when I can't afford a new laptop. I think what I will do is buy a mini netbook for about $250, and just use that and my work computer until I can afford a full laptop again. SIGH.

So if I'm not on the board much for a few weeks, that's why.

[gremcint]

You should see how much an adapter is and then you could use a external monitor with it at home at least.

[JoitheArtist]

Eh, I wanted a new one anyway. I'm hoping to get a Mac, and avoid Vista, which has never worked well for me. A netbook is a good idea for me anyway, as I often do a lot of writing away from home: something that's got net access and word processing in a small package will be great for me.

Thanks for the idea, though!

[Bella_Vixen]

When I got my new computer, I was at first concerned because it has Vista, and I had never used it before.

My Mom HATES my new computer , but I honestly do NOT see any difference between Vista and whatever else.

[gremcint]

I was referring to using the new computer with the external monitor incase you want somehting bigger than the nine inches.

[Megg]

Now when I turn it on, it tries to boot Windows, and shuts itself off again.

Our boy's laptop was doing this, it was weird. Anyway, I went to look at his computer, and noticed the CD drive spinning up as it was trying to boot. I took the game out when I tried to reboot it, and it booted. It was trying to boot from the CD. I have a feeling he's in trouble, though. He's been getting a weird dll error when he plays Warcraft 3. We need to do a restore, but he never did a backup, and we can't do a clean install of XP because we do not have a disk. We have a CD key, but no disk. Awesome.

I love computers! I feel your pain. Just on the million to one chance it will help temporarily, have you checked your boot order in your bios? Might want to make sure the hd is first on the list.

[blas]

I think every Vista is different. Mine isn't compatable with diddly squat, I cannot upload any photos of any kind, I get an incompatability warning every time I try to run something different, but my mother's laptop is perfectly fine.

Meanwhile, mine is so slow that I can literally smoke a cigarette and nuke some supper in the microwave while I wait for it to turn on all the way.

[AccountingDrone]

Careful adding an external monitor to a netbook, you might overstress the graphics card, it really isnt designed for that.


May I suggest you make a linux boot disc? I made a SuSe test disc [it boots the computer in linux without changing the actual operating system to see if you lke it, then if you do like it you can do a full install. See if that will get you online without spending much in the way of money til you can save up for the pemanent computer.

I have an asus aspire netbook, and it barely qualifies as a computer, it is dog slow and basically can only do email and light surfing. The screen at 8.5: diagonal is literally HALF a sheet of typing paper. Think about it. [i got mine to do emails while I am on the road jobhunting.]

It is depressing when you click to open a page and wait as if you are on dialup, and I have the fastest cable modem charter offers [10/3]

I have been playing with suse since suse 9 =)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SUSE and I am debating putting it on the aspire.

[Nurian]

My desktop did that. I replaced the hard drive, reinstalled Vista. Works fine now.

[JoitheArtist]

Thanks for all the ideas! I'm going shopping for a netbook after work today, since it'd be nice to have one even after getting a full laptop. Then I'll turn my hated laptop over to the professionals, to see if they can fix it. I honesty don't want to touch it again, as I'm afraid I'll screw it up worse! And apart from all my pictures, my 120,000 word novel is on there! I really don't want to lose it!

[Megg]

Oh holy moley don't mess with it until you can back up those files!! You, btw, are fired for not having an external backup.

Seriously, though, I am glad you are getting it sorted out.

[JoitheArtist]

Hopefully, I will be the proud owner of a new netbook in a few hours. I think the MSI Wind is going to give me the features I need at a price that works for me. The store in Irvine has a few in stock, so I'm going to drop by after work.

I'm so excited!

[DGoddessChardonnay]

Meanwhile, mine is so slow that I can literally smoke a cigarette and nuke some supper in the microwave while I wait for it to turn on all the way.

And that's when you know you need to reformat and reinstall Windows.

My laptop is doing similar. I can light a cigarette, push the power button. I'll have that smoked and start another one by the time Gypsy boots up and everything has loaded into the taskbar.

Which I'll have fixed this weekend, as for some reason the menu option to get into the reinstall section was disabled (RTO store took it overnight last fall and put in some security screen, which disabled the reinstall function.)

Another reason why I detest not having a Recovery CD set like I had for my previous laptops.

[JoitheArtist]

Back online!!

Ended up getting the MSI Wind U100 for $300. Like it a lot so far! Tiny keyboard will take some getting used to, though...

[Eric the Grey]

If the tiny keyboard is a problem, it has a USB port, you could probably plug one in.

I probably missed your previous post, so feel free to ignore me if you've already determined otherwise, but...

I was thinking, you could see if anyone could download a copy of Ubuntu for you, and see if it'll boot from that. It would let you know if your problem was with Windows or Hardware related...

At the very least, you could most likely get data off that drive and onto a USB drive to transfer to your new machine.



Eric the Grey