Tech Hell

Sorry, I meant to post something earlier, but it will have to wait.  I've been in tech hell.  It didn't seem like a big program -- and technically it really wasn't -- but it was still hellish.  And it's only finally been resolved.

It began first thing this morning when I went to reboot my system.  Fine.  Except that once shut down it wouldn't boot up.  I eventually called my techie friend who said it sounded like the power supply went out.  He had a used spare one around, but it should be fine, with at least a couple years left on it, so I went over to his place where he hooked it up.  We tested it, all was well, so I brought my computer home.

Plugging everything back in, I booted up the system and started working on my piece here.  When all of a sudden -- kablooey!  (That's the technical term.)  The computer shut down and went black.  It started to boot back up, but shut down again.  Same thing happened yet again.  And then it pretty much went silent.

I called my techie friend, and he said this was probably incredibly flukish (swell...), but the power supply he put in probably had enough juice in it to look like it was fine, but most likely was defective.  So, I had to go to the store to buy a new one.  "Get one that's AT compatible," he said, "not an ATX."  

Alas, the store only had models that used the ATX protocol.  So, heading back to my car I told him this, and prepared to make the loooong drive to a computer supply story.  Oh, wait, he said, I told you wrong -- "ATX is what you want.  It's fine."

Good!  So, I bought it, took the new power supply to him, which he set up.  It worked perfectly.  Great.  Since this was a new power supply, it should last longer than 20 minutes...

I got home, plugged everything in once again, and...well, hmmm, odd.  It was taking really long to boot up.  And something looked wrong.  And once the Windows Desktop showed up, it looked really wrong.  Icons for programs I hadn't used in years, files I no longer used.  So, I checked System Properties -- and it was running Windows 7.  Now, that might seem okay to some people...except I use Windows 10!!!  I rebooted to see if that might address the issue, and not only did it not fix anything, but it took almost four minutes to shut down, rather than 15 seconds.

And so...okay, you know the drill at this point -- I called my techie friend.

Fortunately, he knew I had a second, older drive in my system, and it likely had Windows 7 on it, for extra capacity and as a backup if necessary.  During the drive home, a plug must have fallen out of the main C:\ drive -- which runs Windows 10 -- which is why the computer could only boot up to the old Windows 7.  And because this Windows 7 drive was so old, that's why it took so long to boot up and shut down, it was looking for material that was no longer there.  (There were other reasons, too, but that's a main one, including that my newer, main drive was an SSD -- Solid State Drive -- which is much faster.)

And so...again, I shut down the computer, opened it up and found that, indeed, a plug had fallen out of the Solid State drive.  I plugged it in, plugged all the other cord in once more, and booted up.

And it works!  O huzzah.

And so, I'm posting this instead of what I had planned.  But then, I had a lot of things planned.  My beloved Northwestern was scheduled to be on ESPN for football.  There was a screening at the Writers Guild I wanted to see.  I got a call that morning from my cousin who was in town for a wedding, and invited me to the pre-wedding party on the beach.  And I had to be home by 5 PM for the Cubs.

Ah, the plans of mice and men.  At least I'm watching Northwetern in the background -- tied 17-17 against #6 ranked Ohio Sate.  And eventually I'll decompress.

It was such a simple, basic issue.  And it only took six hours.