Crash!
I'm typing this as I watch/listen to The Passion of the Lord According to St. Francis on EWTN.
I'm typing this on my new laptop.
I'd been thinking of getting a laptop, but this past week it became a necessity.
My regular computer crashed.
An HP. Operation on Windows Vista.
An update came down last week, and it wiped out my hard drive. Totally. Everything. All my files, pictures, programs, and so on.
Everything.
The technician who responded to my panicked call to HP acknowledged that sometimes Windows updates do cause computers to crash.
As happened to me.
And sometimes, everything in the hard drive gets wiped out.
As happened to me.
HP sent me recovery discs to restore the computer to the condition it was in when I bought it some five years ago. I had to pay for them, of course. Even though it was the update that caused the problem in the first place.
Fortunately, I had saved many of the family photos, and almost all of my poems and plays and short stories, and most of my novel on cds and at online sites.
Some things have been lost, though.
The HP is in a shop being restored. They checked first to see if any of my old files had survived the update.
Nope.
Maybe by Sunday it will be usable again.
Meanwhile, I am typing this on the laptop I bought with the help of my gifted eldest daughter.
A Dell.
With Windows 7, not Vista.
Advice to all:
Make copies of everything you don't want to lose.
And be careful if you run Windows.
I'm typing this on my new laptop.
I'd been thinking of getting a laptop, but this past week it became a necessity.
My regular computer crashed.
An HP. Operation on Windows Vista.
An update came down last week, and it wiped out my hard drive. Totally. Everything. All my files, pictures, programs, and so on.
Everything.
The technician who responded to my panicked call to HP acknowledged that sometimes Windows updates do cause computers to crash.
As happened to me.
And sometimes, everything in the hard drive gets wiped out.
As happened to me.
HP sent me recovery discs to restore the computer to the condition it was in when I bought it some five years ago. I had to pay for them, of course. Even though it was the update that caused the problem in the first place.
Fortunately, I had saved many of the family photos, and almost all of my poems and plays and short stories, and most of my novel on cds and at online sites.
Some things have been lost, though.
The HP is in a shop being restored. They checked first to see if any of my old files had survived the update.
Nope.
Maybe by Sunday it will be usable again.
Meanwhile, I am typing this on the laptop I bought with the help of my gifted eldest daughter.
A Dell.
With Windows 7, not Vista.
Advice to all:
Make copies of everything you don't want to lose.
And be careful if you run Windows.
posted by A Secular Franciscan | 9:16 PM
3 Comments:
So the data wasn't recoverable at all? :( I'm sorry dad. I'm glad the laptop is working out though! Computers can be really frustrating sometimes.
I will say though that this probably wasn't HP's fault. It was a Windows update pushed by Microsoft that did it. HP's logo may be on the window that comes up, but it was most likely a Microsoft update since they pushed out 23 important updates last week. And, it was on Vista, which isn't a very stable OS. So, if you want to blame anyone, blame Microsoft. (Signed, a former member of the Microsoft helpdesk who can attest to how badly they handle even their internal updates.)
Valid point oh gifted daughter. It was a Windows updates. I revised the post a little to take that into account.
Oh my!! Thanks for the frequent-backup reminder. I will be sure to do so.
(Love that your daughter's name is Clare!)
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