Oh, Brothers: Part Two

The other day I wrote the long tale here about having a printer problem and my galling, utter stupidity on how, when trying to find how to fix it, I then got snookered by people who had spoofed the Brother Printer Support page, missing that they kept referring to it as "Brothers" (since it sounded like "Brother's"), paid $295, and incredibly oddly think I got my printer fixed. But the larger, concern was that all my three computers and mobile phone had been corrupted. That's when I sent an email to my tech whiz friend Ed Bott.

Everyone should have an Ed Bott in their life. There's an expression to describe experts, "He wrote the book on...". Well, Ed literally wrote the book on Windows. He's been hired by Microsoft Press to write their official books on how to use each version of Windows since Windows XP. He currently is proofing galleys for the major update coming to Windows 11 (which you can pre-order here). So, believe me, while everyone should have an Ed Bott in their life, I'm just grateful that I do.

As I mentioned at the end of in Part One, I wrote to Ed very late in the first evening of my computer hell, and after a sleepless night, I got up early and found a reply from him, which began "I have a busy morning and not a lot of time to deal with this, sorry. But here's my quick take." There were no accusations to make me feel more stupid or concerned than I was. Just a direct, polite assessment that ended --

"At this point you can no longer trust anything about your system. There is nothing simple you can do to ensure its integrity. The only guaranteed fix is to back up your data, reinstall a clean copy of Windows, and start fresh on that computer. Everything you have is in the cloud, right? So it should be easier than you think.

"As learning experiences go, this one is somewhat painful."

And then a couple emails later, despite saying he was swamped, he wrote the most comforting thing I could read, especially coming from Ed Bott, responding to my greatest concerns --

"Your other computers are not affected. They can't install software on your phone. Do not worry about your phone.  Your files in the cloud are unaffected.

"This is a very low-level operation. These are not sophisticated criminals."

It's hard to describe the great depth of relief washing over me when reading that from Ed. And then re-reading it, to reinforce the words.

I met Ed as part of a group invited to cover the IFA tech show in Berlin. Ed was invited because of his massive expertise. I was invited because writing a basic tech review column for the Writers Guild for 18 years likely sounded far more impressive than it was. He writes a superb column here for the high-end ZDNet, which is highly worth checking out -- he's a major techie, but writes in human English. And can be very funny. I try not to abuse his friendship by asking for help too often. But sometimes one must . And Ed is brilliant in his answers, and devotes way too much time answering my annoying barrage of questions. But he always says, "This is what I do. And I figure if you don't understand something, many others don't, too, so it gives me ideas for columns."

While I understand the basics about computers, and a little beyond, I can't get very far under the hood. And whatever I do know, I find -- like I'm sure most people -- if one doesn't use the more uncommon details regularly, you tend to forget them and need a refresher. And that's fine. But it's terrible if the time you need a refresher is during an emergency. And that's what I faced when Ed tried to help me through his emails about reinstalling Windows and recovering my system.

To be clear, the computer might not have needed that, nothing malicious may have been added to corrupt my system. But as Ed said, I didn't know and had to assume the system wasn't safe.

And so began the follow-up. My three days of hell. In which I did the near impossible -- frustrated Ed Bott. But he remained remarkable through it all.

I won't recount everything. It was three days and too much detail and too much repetition. But the main point of it all is: it should have been easy, if any of the steps worked how they were supposed to. But they didn't. And it was exacerbated by Ed having the teach me certain things I should have known ahead of time before an emergency. It got down to the point of him eventually writing, "Don't tell me what you're doing. Just answer my questions about what happened after you did them." And even all this was exacerbated by another big problem. But I'm getting ahead of myself. More on that in a bit...

The first thing we tried was a new feature in Windows 11, "Point-in-time" restore. Once you turn this on in Settings, it periodically creates a "restore point" which you can select, and your computer will go back to that point when everything ran well. But you have to turn it on. And...I did! But -- it's a new feature and didn't work. Had it, everything would have been fixed at the beginning. But alas.

Next, Ed said "Not to worry," because he knew I do regular backups. And once a month I use my backup software to create an "image" file. You just use your backup software to recover that image file, and your system will revert to the date you created the image. In my case, that was three weeks ago. Terrific.

Two problems: One, I hadn't read up on recovering an image file in years and forgot how to do it. Ed, again (of course), helped out there, even though he didn't use that particular back up software. And so finally, I got it to run.

The second problem is that it, too, didn't work! I had the backup image file to use -- and I tried and tried and tried to recover it...but it wouldn't work. Galling. And again, had it worked, it would have been a simple fix, and everything would be running fine at this point. And this article would be over. But alas. And alas. And... Finally, Ed said to forget it, there are other ways.

I've left out a lot. Just know we're now in the second day of trying. And keep in mind, the incredibly gracious Ed Bott is devoting his time while in the final stages of proofing his galleys for his book.

And this is the day hell rained down on everything.

("Wait," I hear you cry, "All this other stuff wasn't hell? Oh, no, not at all. It was deeply disappointing, incredibly annoying. But not hell.)

This is the point where things got more technical, but still not difficult if you know what you're doing. And I should have known what I was doing because I had all the right backups, but I hadn't read up enough on what do to. There were a lot of starts and stops, and having instructions explained. And things that should have worked not working.

Again, I'm leaving out a lot. But a few things are important to know here --

Notably, my computer would no longer boot up. So I needed a Windows Recovery Drive. The one fortunate thing in this whole mess is that I have a backup laptop, so I could unplug the now-bad computer from its docking station and plug in the backup. And I could keep working on the fix.

The good news is that I did have a Windows Recovery Drive on a flash drive since I update it every three months -- after reading one of Ed's ZDNet great articles on them. The bad news is that that's what I had labeled it; in reality it was recovery Windows Installation Files.. And so Ed said, nope, and I had to create one -- something you don't want to have to do during an emergency... as he rightly noted again.

And alas (there's that word again), for some reason it wouldn't download properly. I tried different flash drives, tried formatting them, tried to figure out how "partitions" worked and tried to keep Ed from getting too (properly) annoyed at me. "Why are you trying to create partitions??" he said impressively politely, though pointedly. "You don't need partitions. But you should know about them -- so, read Chapter 2 in my book." (Trust me, I will. But I needed to get through this, decompress, and catch up with life. For one thing, I'd been skipping meals. But back to the tale.)

To add a bit of whimsy here, inn the midst of all this I got a phone call from the guy at the fictitious "Brothers". You may recall from Part One he said he'd call back -- trying to upsell me a firewall. I didn't answer and blocked his number, though I did read part of his message that got transcribed: "Hi, Bob, this is Nick Martin, your technician and account manager from the printer support team...I hope you remember me from Brothers. We worked like two days back on a computer..." I emailed this to Ed, whose pithy response was, "lol. They have some nerve."

Back to the morass. All that effort to download the Windows Recovery Drive took about three hours. We're now at the end of of the second day. Nothing accomplished, unless you count discovering there's a way to push Ed Bott's legendary patience.

An important note here. At this point, I'm monumentally furious at myself for all my stupidities and profoundly frustrated and stressed. Happy only that I have my backup laptop. But what infuriated me the most was that I was risking Ed Bott's decency, graciousness, time and patience, especially when I knew how swamped he was. Yet he sent at least 100 emails. He kept saying he wasn't annoyed at all, and the only thing that mattered was getting my computer to boot up. But it was still a massive imposition, and that I was causing this for Ed, who was sticking by me because that's who he is, was absolutely the worst thing of all. And remains so.

And then we get into Day Three, Sunday. We're nearing the end of the story -- but this is where it gets really bad. (Yes, this is the bad part!! That other hellish stuff? Piffle.) This is the unexpected twist I mentioned earlier.

That's because overnight, I noticed that my laptop was coming apart! The keyboard and bottom had separated, likely from the battery overheating and expanding. "Well, gee, that's not good, " I wisely thought.

In the morning, when our emails started up again, I told this to Ed, sure it was the problem. To my surprise, he was calm about it -- that's Ed -- no, it's not a problem. It means the laptop probably isn't good any more, but we should still be able to get the drive to run, so you can access it. I will add that I'd already figured out, too, that the laptop was done for, and I'd be getting a new one. In fact, I'd been planning to for a while., So, during the previous evening I'd even picked out three possibilities on a great Dell Outlet website Ed once introduced me to, where they refurbish computers to like-new condition at great prices. This is also when I began to tell Ed I was willing to push as long as he wanted, but if he preferred to say, "This is far enough," I would accept his word. But Ed said the same thing he kept repeating each time I offered this -- "No, the goal here is to get your drive to boot, so you can use it, and learn how to do it." Because that's Ed Bott.

I know this is very long -- I may submit this for a Pulitzer -- but honestly, I'm leaving out 95% of what was tried. And I'll be reasonably brief here. Just know that this part took all of Sunday.

I finally got a Windows Recovery Drive to work. I'd tested it on my former backup, now my main computer. Huzzah! And then -- oh, that "alas" word. It didn't work on the bad computer. It didn't work on any of its ports. It didn't work all day. For hours and hours and hours of trying.

Say it all together: It should have worked and resolved everything.  But it didn’t work.

We couldn’t get the bad computer to recognize any of the Recovery Drives we made and tried. There’s so much I did wrong during this entire process.  But adding to the hell was that the computer itself was borderline toast.  And things that should have worked and fixed it easily… weren’t working.

That is not to let me off the hook, but for perspective. While I knew some things, I added to the frustration by not knowing far too many things I should have and by being stressed and unfocused.  That’s all on me.  But each of the steps we tried should have worked for anybody – experts or neophyte luddites.  But, as I said, the bad computer was in horrible condition, maybe even unworkable.  (Though I'll keep trying...for a while. If any of the things we tried had worked the first time, as they're supposed to and as we hoped, this would have been resolved quickly.  I’d still have a reading list of things I have to learn better, but it wouldn’t have been the hell it became.

On the positive side, I did set the record for acknowledging stupidity, mortification and apologies.

All this said, there is a "happy" resolution of sorts. Ed and I agreed that though the bad computer is not ready to give up on yet...when it's time, its SSD can be saved as a backup external drive. (Easy to remove since the computer has split apart...) And as a result, I found a terrific refurbished laptop and ordered it. (Unexpectedly, when I told Ed the model to find out if he thought it was good, he said, "That's the same model as my main computer.")

And there's still more to the hell, but I'll only give it four sentences. I had the hardest time actually buying the Dell laptop, since my Virtual Card wasn't being accepted! (I needed a Virtual Card because my "real" card hadn't arrived yet. And so, I lost out on the first refurb I wanted to buy, since there was only one. Happily -- such a rare, wonderful word -- I not only got the Virtual Card approved, but I like the laptop I'm getting more than the one I lost out on, and for 35% less. The story isn't fully over yet. Including setting up the new laptop properly. But that's basically it...with a lot left out. If you made it to the end of both parts of these interminable articles, I'm impressed and appreciative. So, we'll end with the full moral and reason for telling this all, as a cautionary tale.

Be incredibility diligent when researching help online and even more careful when clicking on links. When you're pretty sure you know what you're doing, don't overlook the basics. Read up on recovery and emergency tasks before you need them. And refresh your recollection on how they work before you need them. And most importantly of all -- Get an Ed Bott in your life. And if you do, try not to test his patience, no matter how patient he is. He doesn't deserve to have it tested.

Consider checking out his ZDNet column. And look into getting his book, in case you may ever need it. Both are linked above.

And that's it. The new computer is on its way.

Dedicated to Ed Bott.