Mr Magnetic...

Mr. Magnetic is at it again. When I last left off on this technological saga, I was trying to get the laptop WiFi to find my Internet connection and could not. I had set the laptop aside to wait for Adam, my student to come over to fix both of them. However, having a new toy and not playing with it is misery. I had to remove a number of junk programs that come preloaded on new computers, many of which are not even accessible from Hungary. AT&T? Duh! I am busy using Add/Remove Programs and deleting this and that, but then I look at my properties on the C: drive. I still have 6 GB used up. I do not understand how this could be when all that is left is XP and a couple of other programs that are less than 1 MB each. One of the main reasons for the laptop is to write and edit photos while traveling. Last night, I decided to put some of my photography editing programs on the laptop as well as my clean up program. However, I am still annoyed that my computer real estate has squatters on it. In my superior computer wisdom, I decide that the fragments of the deleted programs are still taking up disk space, so I use XP to do a disk clean up. It is half way through and the computer shuts itself off. Trying not to get hysterical, I wait. Nothing happens. I turn it on again manually. A SEVERE ERROR has occurred. This is every computer person’s nightmare message. I had to reformat the hard drive. NOOOO!!! I did it. Now all of the nasty little programs that I spent 45 minutes deleting are sitting pretty once again covering my screen, but this time I could swear there are little smirking faces in the icons. It could be my imagination. All of the photography programs went up is a poof of cyber smoke. Now I am skittish about the computer, so I run to the desktop and instant message Blaise. He offers to go with me to the computer store in the morning before his first class. The problem is, he writes in his reply is that you bought the computer on Wednesday and tomorrow is Monday. You only had a 3 day in store guarantee. I feel the scream starting in the pit of my stomach, working up my diaphragm, and approaching my throat. It never escaped my lips, though. Past history has proven that primal screams have no effect on my mood and Ron is now oblivious to them. There was no point, so I sat and fumed in silence instead. Monday morning, off I go to meet Blaise at the computer store, laptop in tow. The salesman who sold it to me was there and asked Blaise when I had bought it. The salesman rubbed his chin, but let me squeak by since technically, they are open a ½ day on Saturday, so that counts as a business day to make three. He went off to get a technician. Fortunately, he spoke English and we were able to communicate. He explained that his thinking is that I tried compressing the files, but since the computer was new and there really were not any files used yet to compress, this caused the error. He said there should not be another problem, but if there is, I would have to take it to Toshiba. HP is the only one who authorizes them for repairs. Feeling a bit more confident, I thanked Blaise and went home again. Then I thought about this some more. I decided that since the hard drive is 100 GB, it would be smart to partition the drive, so a crash in the future will not hurt as much. Can I divide the partition? No way would I even attempt it. My old computer guy who partitioned the hard drive for me on the desktop is coming over next week to do it for me. In the meanwhile, I cannot put any programs on it, so it sits in its case waiting to be used.

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