PC woes
I got an email the other day.
A company had been trying to collect the balance on an outstanding account, and they wrote an apologetic letter to say that there were insufficient funds in my Mastercard.
This didn’t surprise me. What did surprise me was that that account lasted so long. There must have been a lot of cash in it at the beginning.
So I gave them the details for Jeanette Pasquale of Bordeaux, which is an account I haven’t used before.
That worked very nicely, and they wrote to say they were mailing me the details, and that it was very important that I print off that mail for my records.
The mail duly arrived, and then I went to print it.
I must explain my setup. You see, I have a junk room an office where my broadband comes in the window. That is where I have my printer. I also have an old PC that I found in a skip, and the printer is connected to that. So that PC has to be running, before I can print anything off my laptop.
I went in and gave the PC a kick, as that is the way to get it to work. I then went back to my armchair and waited.
I heard the PC whirring away, and it gave the loud beep that means it is nearly ready. I usually give it another minute or so before I try to print, so I waited. It gave another loud beep. That shouldn’t happen. I waited and it beeped again. This was getting annoying.
I hauled myself out of the armchair and went into the junk room office to see what was going on.
The PC was starting up nicely, but as soon as it got as far as showing something on the screen, it would switch itself off and on again and start the whole process from scratch.
Fuck.
I kicked it a couple of times, but that didn’t have any noticeable effect. This was getting serious.
I rooted around, and found a CD in my candle collection [an upside-down CD is great for standing candles on, as it casts all sorts of pretty lights around the room]. I scraped the wax off and stuffed it in the PC.
That seemed to do something, as the next thing it asked me if I wanted to repair my PC. I said yes, of course, so it churned for a bit and then printed ‘C:>’ on the screen. That’s all. Just ‘C:>’. What the fuck use is that?
I tried typing in a few things, like ‘fix windows’ and ‘repair windows’ and ‘fuck you, you shit’ but none of it worked. So I removed the CD and kicked the PC again.
The PC went back to launching itself again, but this time, it did something different. It went into a routine where it claimed it was fixing things. What the hell? I left it to it.
A few minutes later, it started making those noises that sounded like programmes loading, so I went back in to see what was going on. The little bollix was working perfectly!
I printed off the email.
I gave the PC a last kick for luck, and it switched off.
I will never understand these things. Why does a PC work, and then not work? Even more importantly, why does a PC not work, and then work? It doesn’t make sense.
Nothing makes sense these days.
That exact same thing happened to me once.
PC’s work and then stop working when I’ve forgotten to save a days work.
They start working again when I’ve shit my self that everything is lost and make excuses to all and sundry.
I don’t have a PC any more, I have a UCD student in my office. It makes weird sounds too and pretends to know everything. It does breakdown like a PC, but only around exam time or when the grant is late coming through, so I can usually time it, which is handy.
😀 – Sometimes a little bit of tenderness works. I find if I gently caress my office PC it works better.
(My laptop gets jealous though.)
Maxi – That sounds OK, but doesn’t it work its way through your private stash fairly quickly? And how does it respond to a swift kick?
Darren – With all due respect, I think you need to get out more?
Sounds quite similar to what happened to me. I had one of my memory cards plugged in to my computer and tried to move more files to it – and it crashed the computer.
Since then the card is no longer recognised by the computer, and most of the info on the card has been lost 🙁
I wonder if I should kick the card, and then it will work again and the data will be recovered?
TheChrisD – Try kicking it. I think computers are like women – they respond well to a bit of physical abuse?
I tried kicking it, but it resulted in a protest march. Fucking students.
As for my private stash, there ain’t a man alive who could take that!
Sounds to me that you have the perfect qualifications to be in IT. You could command a huge salary, kick a few PC’s, tell me to turn it of and on again …. !!!!
god, you crack me up! i think all computers have an evil gremlin residing in them that just gets cranky pleasure from messing with us. well, i’m off to dante’s 8th circle of hell(wal-mart) in search of a cheap coffee maker. have a good one 🙂
My computer hates me. It waits until I’m halfway through an online banking transaction then pisses off for a sandwich. I think I need you to come round and kick it. Next Thursday suit?
It’s all down to these antivirus programs. You install them to annialate viruses and they start acting like viruses themselves and take over your comp and your sanity! Blub…I know, I’ve got the same battle at my end. Oh Lor Grandad, you don’t think my antivirus program has spread its evil tentacles over to your PC do you? If it has, please give it (the antivirus program) a damn good kicking and sell it to a tourist…(they’ll buy anything)!
Linux man, Linux.
Keiron advocates holding the box at least a foot from the floor and then dropping it – straight down. And, yes it usually works! To think he spent four years at uni to learn that! These software engineers have got it made!!!
Moon – I learned the kicking thing from an IT bloke. It works!
Prin – I have very cantankerous computers. My laptop is not only very evil, it has a worse turn of foul language than myself. In fact my foul language skill are mostly computer taught. I hope the coffee maker is kickable?
EMum – I’ll get my coat.
Geri – Funny you should mention viruses. I think that PC has one. It is looking very pallid and sweaty. I’ll try some antibiotics.
Thrity – *sigh* There is always someone to shout Linux. IT DOESN’T DO WHAT I WANT IT TO DO. Got that?
Kate – does it matter what type of floor? Wood? Concrete?
Well when he lived at home – it was a carpeted wooden floor – and to be fair his computers always had their innards spilling out too where he’d been modifying them – his bedroom was a veritable minefield – paid off in the end tho!
What’s that got to do with it?
Kate – I knew there would be a problem. We don’t have many luxuries like that. It will have to be plain wood or a kick.
Thrifty – I tried it before
Well, as he is languishing amid thunderstorms in the Dominican Republic currently and without a decent connection I can only advise a six inch drop and see what happens – gotta be better than kicking it tho? Posh buggar, I bet thery’re polished wood at that?
Yeah, me too, back in the days of slackware and the old “re-compile your kernel and pray”. I like Macs now (based on FreeBSD, so I can do my unix-y stuff too), but still have windows for the missus on the laptop. Work is all windows-y but as we make chips (silicon, not potato) we need a linux jobby, which is nice.
@ Thriftcriminal – oh the joys of speaking a foreign language! well done you!
PCs have been put on this earth to torture us. If it’s not the printer, it’s the internet, if it’s not the internet it’s the blue screen that fancies a chat and I’m just not interested in what it has to say quite frankly.
They just need a swift kick ever now and again. I got aggravated with an ol’ 386 one time, and kicked it so hard that the motherboard ripped off of its attachment points and broke the graphics card in the process. It never booted again. 🙂
My cousin, who troubleshoots computer problems for people, says that 80% of computer glitches can be fixed just by rebooting. And 90% will be fixed by re-rebooting.
I usually find a good thrashing with a branch and threats of the recycling plant will do the trick. No computer wants its cadmium rendered.
How does rebooting a PC help when its problem is that it won’t stop rebooting? 😐
I guess it’s one of those 20% of problems that rebooting doesn’t help.
Ah, you’re obviously not a DOS nerd, Grandad – C:> is the cue for all those wonderful commands that we used to be able to give computers, to really screw up their insides! Like completely erasing the boot sector, or melting the partitions between drives… not like now, when you are reduced to begging the Windows programs to let you speak to their manager! I love the sight of a black screen and blinking white cursor — and the POWER it represents. But I was usually reduced to physically re-booted (ie: giving it a swift kick w/the boot) most of the time anyway… sometimes taking apart another computer in front of it put the fear of god into it…
Cathy
Cathy – Many many years ago, I had a PC on loan. I was mucking about and tried “C:>format C: /q”. I am not sure where I got that from, but I didn’t try it again. I didn’t get the loan of a PC again either. I love the idea of dismembering another computer in front of it. I must try that.