Computer Odyssey
Since last sunday the world seems to be no longer the same – at least my computer-world. After a lot of time and energy spent in trying to restore the old PC (even with installing a new harddisk) and a lot of tips from the support team of my office, which I all tried without success, I finally had to agree that the PC-patient was about to die, or better the “lost data-continent” to sink. So I packed everything I could into the ark of a newly acquired external harddisk drive and set off to the new world, a new laptop. (As per the spiritual dimension of such a migration you might read the Lunar Messenger about “Dissolution and Creation“…)
And so the laborious process of the re-incarnation of the data to a new “baby”-laptop started (which however wasn’t tabula rasa, but already filled with a lot of impressions in form of programs.)
Long hours of work and installing the programs from the old PC yesterday ended in a start-up blockage, not allowing me any more to enter the windows program. The freshly burned emergency-CD proved to be unable to render out its data to the PC, only when stopping this process windows decided to give me entry into the new world (not to tell of other problems on the way, with printer, scanner, pdf-program….)
Using the try and error-method with different ways finally lead me to the report page of the laptop-producer, a well-known, world-leading enterprise. First I scrupulously filled out a registration form and error-report, in German, and when at the end I pressed the “send”-button, it turned out that all was done for fresh air: “Page not found”. The system was so kind to lead me to the corresponding English American page, where I started the process again, filling out all about my experiences with the high-tech deadlock of my new machine, hoping that since the laptop is from an American firm (though the machine is “made in China” – of course, the Chinese getting hold of the American market…), the webpage will work better in that language. The result however was the same: “Page not found”. Fine, I thought, this gives you a good lesson of detachment, overcoming my PC-addiction.
But there was the other voice saying: Try it with the support, try it with the support tomorrow, maybe they show you a way back to your pc-paradise. Looking up the stars in the astro-calendar, time seems to be auspicious: Mercury has stopped his retrograde movement yesterday (and when he, the ruler of communication and inter-connection is retrograde, electronics seem to run havoc – my PC at my office also stopped working last week, and I have other experiences of this weird influence, making me nearly superstitious….) and now things should start working again. So I’ll phone them tomorrow – fearing that they tell me to reset the entire harddisk, or to send in the laptop to the service…
If you don’t see any posts in the weblog over the next days, you can suppose me sweating, not from the sun, but from trying to restore the PC…
August 1st, 2006 at 11:42 am
Dear Ludger,
My Mac and myself feel very sorry for you…
Thanks, though, for the fun out of the despair !
Amitiés,
CD