I Guess It’s Time To Bury My Old Dell Desktop Computer

Sigh … I’ve been putting up with a few mildly irritating glitches with my 2002 Dell computer for about the last 6 months, and two weeks ago things started really ganging up on me, computer-wise, that is.

As a solo internet marketing entrepreneur and an SEO consultant, needless to say I have to be hooked up to the web 24/7.  And I need all aspects of my computer to run smoothly and efficiently.  But if you are like me, then the  TECHNICAL aspects of what makes a computer “tick” and all the technical gobble-de-gook you need to know to try and fix problems … well it can be so upsetting and frustrating ’cause you don’t have that knowledge, that you just want to scream.  That’s just about where I am right now.

It all started with my computer giving me the dreaded black screen (but thank goodness it wasn’t totally blank), with the message telling me to push F1 and “No Boot Device Can Be Found. Insert CD” or words to that effect.  I don’t know what I may have installed/uninstalled/done that might have caused this.  But luckily, all I had to do was push good ‘ol F1 and voila!  Windows XP would load up, or be recognized, or whatever the technical terminology is and I was good to go.

So I lived with this glitch but did want to correct it.  So …

One Day I Decided to Try and “Fix” The Problem

I won’t go into the long story, but I inserted the Dell OS CD to try and repair the glitch.  And through ignorance (I admit it) I made a big boo-boo and ended up having to completely reinstall my C-drive.  I’ve been blessed in that I have never had a computer crash or any of the other things I’ve read about but there is a “first time for everything” and it was MY TIME, I guess.  I had THANKFULLY backed up almost everything to my D-drive.  Thank goodness my son had installed another hard drive in my computer a few years previously in order that important files and such could be stored in the D-drive and I had at the very least made sure everything was safely stored there before I inserted the dang CD.But I hadn’t backed up my Favorites and all the very important emails in Outlook. I lost over 200 email addresses and archived messages I’d been saving for various reasons. Stupid me, yes … more on this issue later.

But After A Complete Reformatting Of the C-Drive, The Problem Persisted

Yup.  I still had the problem. Had to click on F1 to get Windows to load. My computer-tech partner, Damian said “Claudia!  Your computer is your livelihood!  Your computer is 5 years old.  It is time for a new one.”     Yes, yes Damian … I KNOW that !  Something is corrupted–maybe the C-drive or maybe the motherboard.  This seems pretty much a given.

But geez, I just purchased a fabulous Dell Inspiron 1720 laptop with lots of extra bells and whistles just a few months ago, so my computer budget is tight right now. Yup!  Hindsight is golden, and now a big part of me wishes I purchased a high-powered desktop computer.  Oh well …But off I went, reinstalling the programs and such that I needed to keep the old Dell working, and installing Spybot S&E was one of the things I reinstalled.  But, it had a few changes since I’d last installed it, and one of those things was called a “Resident”. 

Spybot Search & Destroy’s Resident Did Me In

First let me preface by saying I’ve used Spybot S&D on my computer for many years.  I’ve been very satisfied, it caught nasties and there were no conflicts with anything else. But not this time.  I enabled the “resident” feature and now I know why my desktop has become an almost worthless blob.  Through my ignorance of  exactly what the resident feature does, I either accepted or denied certain “registry change” requests that kept popping up after I uninstalled a few programs and upon restarting my computer … EGADS!!  Now I was getting logged on and logged off the Welcome page.  I ran to my laptop and searched on Google and found this was a registry problem.  OH-OH!  I immediately remembered all the registry change windows that Spybot had produced after the uninstalls.  My heart sunk.I know enough about computers that THIS was baaaaaaaaad … I had really screwed things up.

I Think the Universe Is Telling Me It Is Time To Leave Well Enough Alone     

Damian is right.  It’s time to upgrade.  But right now I am thinking about turning this brand new laptop into a permanent computer.  Why not?  Many people do and this one is loaded and clean and good to go!  Maybe I’ll buy an external keyboard (I’ve already got 2 different sized cordless mice) and maybe I’ll start to learn to use external hard-drives.   I’m learning about  docking stations.

So, What’d I Learn From This Frustrating Experience??

I’m trying to laugh here:  I learned that s### happens (excuse me, but the saying is true!).  And if you are completely dependent upon computers for your livelihood, then you need to have an emergency back-up plan(s) in place.  You need to be aware that computers can be finicky, and we are human so we may make mistakes when utilizing these things, and well … though it’s only a computer and it can be fixed, you still can’t be shut down and “out of business” for too long.