My Tale of Laptop Woes

I have had a stressful couple of weeks when it comes to technology. I swear, if my phone gets any funny ideas I'll either scream or cry.

Maybe both.

Our story starts a couple Sundays ago, when I went to see Hello, Dolly. I came home and booted up my laptop, doing some writing before I took my shower. When I returned, my computer had gone into sleep mode and because it was temperamental, I had to turn it back on. That's when I got to the problem.

My laptop asked to do a disk scan and I agreed. Everything seemed fine as it rebooted...but then the log in screen never appeared. Instead, all I saw was a black screen and my cursor. Clicking, alt ctrl delete and rebooting the computer didn't do anything. I couldn't log in at all. So I decided to switch to the laptop I had gotten for Christmas, a small one that also turned into a tablet so I could take it when I traveled, and let my other laptop rest for several hours.

When I got home Monday evening, I checked my laptop. Unfortunately, I got the same black screen and had to concede that my laptop had died on me. I asked my dad if there was a way to retrieve the items off my hard drive but he wasn't sure since I couldn't log into Windows. It seemed I lost a lot.

Yes, I was pretty close to tears and cursing myself out.

I sent the question about ways to retrieve items off my hard drive to the IT guy at work and he agreed to give a look. I brought it my laptop and he confirmed it was dead. He's still trying to retrieve something off my hard drive over a week later.

Anyway, so now the computer I got for travel is now my main laptop. It's fine. I just now need to get used to it. And since it's relatively new, I figured it wouldn't give me many problems.

Boy, was I wrong.

The following Sunday evening, I returned from dinner with my mother and aunt and booted up my laptop as I got ready to watch the Emmys. My computer flashed a blue screen that said "Recovery" and told me that there was an error in booting up. I needed to reinstall some files and drives. But I didn't have a disk to do that, so I had to contact Dell.

I was connected to a tech support guy, who guided me through some diagnostic tests. Once we confirmed it was not my hard drive (thank GOD!), he told me we would have to download Windows on an operable computer and then upload it to my laptop. Unfortunately, the USB drives I had were either too small (4 gig) or too big (64 gig), so I had to pick up either a 8 or 16 gig drive to continue. So I was still without a computer as Sunday went into Monday.

On Monday, I had training in Basking Ridge, NJ, so the route home took me right past my local Target. I made a stop there and was able to pick up a 16 gig USB drive. I got home and emailed the tech support guy, who said he would call me after 9 PM. He kept his word and we were soon downloading Windows.

It took five hours but everything was soon up and running again. I thanked him and he sent me to bed since it was almost 2 AM. So I was able to set everything back up the next day.

So I lost a few blog posts I was going to post and I now have to recreate. Hopefully, I'll get them up...soon.

Just wanted to give you all the head's up!