AllenOK
Executive Chef
Ok, many of you saw my post a little over a week ago, about receiving a monitor and keyboard from a friend. Well, I was told that the monitor in question was "jumpy", and probably didn't have much life left in it. They weren't kidding. It gave up 6 hours of life, and the tube went. Kaput.
I got yet another monitor from another friend. It worked, however, it's a 14" or 15", and I was running 1024 x 768 resolution, and this small monitor couldn't handle it. It wouldn't let my pc boot up.
Last night, I had an epiphany. This morning, I took my tower down to the Geek Squad, explained the situation, and they let me hook it up to a screen, keyboard, mouse, and power, boot the system up, change the resolution to 800 x 600, and shut the system down. No charge.
I got the Restore DVD for my laptop last Friday. It's supposed to completely wipe my HDD and re-install the OS. I ran it not once, not twice, but THREE times, and I still can't get the system to boot up. On the third boot attempt, it froze in the setup process for XP (where it collects info on the hardware in the system before it boots the system), and stayed locked up for about 8 hours, until I shut it down. Gateway Tech Support now believes that the HDD on my laptop is damaged. It's still under warranty, so I can get a new one for free, HOWEVER, I have to cough up a $75 "holding fee", which will be promptly refund it to me when they receive the trashed HDD.
As it stands right now, I know that I've lost several hundred recipes, as well as a database that I created just days before the laptop died. I also lost some historical research data, but I should be able to find that again once I get looking.
Those 100 GB USB external HDD's are looking nice about right now.
I got yet another monitor from another friend. It worked, however, it's a 14" or 15", and I was running 1024 x 768 resolution, and this small monitor couldn't handle it. It wouldn't let my pc boot up.
Last night, I had an epiphany. This morning, I took my tower down to the Geek Squad, explained the situation, and they let me hook it up to a screen, keyboard, mouse, and power, boot the system up, change the resolution to 800 x 600, and shut the system down. No charge.
I got the Restore DVD for my laptop last Friday. It's supposed to completely wipe my HDD and re-install the OS. I ran it not once, not twice, but THREE times, and I still can't get the system to boot up. On the third boot attempt, it froze in the setup process for XP (where it collects info on the hardware in the system before it boots the system), and stayed locked up for about 8 hours, until I shut it down. Gateway Tech Support now believes that the HDD on my laptop is damaged. It's still under warranty, so I can get a new one for free, HOWEVER, I have to cough up a $75 "holding fee", which will be promptly refund it to me when they receive the trashed HDD.
As it stands right now, I know that I've lost several hundred recipes, as well as a database that I created just days before the laptop died. I also lost some historical research data, but I should be able to find that again once I get looking.
Those 100 GB USB external HDD's are looking nice about right now.
