Filed under: Updates
Apparently I was born under an ill-fated, technologically-averse star. My last post detailed the saga of the crashing laptop and subsequent data loss. I quickly replaced said laptop, and thought I was free from computer woes for at least another two years. As ever, life had other plans!
On Saturday night, I was happily watching some obscure BBC miniseries from the 1970s when the computer flashed an error message and froze. No big deal, I thought, as I forced off the power and waited for the laptop to reboot. Except… it didn’t. It never booted ever again! Not in safe mode, not in repair mode, not in start-up repair mode, not in any mode known to computer-kind.
I consulted Jeremy, who, unluckily for him, is my first line of defense in computer-related catastrophes. He gamely came over during his lunch hour on Monday and tried to work his magic. His verdict: there is something seriously weird going on here! He confirmed what I had thought, based on messing about with the Dell diagnostics: there didn’t seem to be anything wrong with the actual hardware, it must be a glitch with the operating system.
The next day, I lugged the laptop back to Best Buy, where I had purchased it a mere 32 days before, where they told me that they could do exactly… NOTHING. Grrrr. At this point, my only option was to call Dell and beg them for system restore discs, which had not come in the box.
Accordingly, I called, and after a looooong time on hold, and several conversations with non-native speakers of English, I was connected to a supervisor who said that he would send out a technician with a brand-new hard drive and memory! FOR FREE!!! Said technician arrived yesterday and installed all-new guts into the laptop. Success!
Luckily, my wonderful friend Stephanie commented on the last post and told me about Dell’s online backup program. Thanks to her, I had been automatically backing up all my documents daily! Therefore, I made it through this bout with technology with all my data intact. It took about 8 hours to restore it, which seemed excessive, but everything is just like it was minutes before the crash!
While I am irked that my new laptop crashed within a month of purchase, I really must give credit to Dell for fixing the issue for free! I called them only expecting to get system restore discs, and instead they replaced all the hardware! I am really relieved that I didn’t have to buy a whole new computer.
So, I really DID learn my lesson this time! My data was backed up, and although the crash was annoying, there are no lasting ramifications. Perhaps I am capable of becoming an adult after all?
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Becoming Jill: Adventures in Adulthood 
Totally capable!!! Did you even recover your resume?!?!
Comment by Sarah July 29, 2010 @ 7:25 pmNo, unfortunately the resume was gone for good… I ended up having to do it again from scratch!
Comment by becomingjill July 29, 2010 @ 7:27 pm