Or as Winnie the Pooh might say...Oh Bother!
Sorry to have just dropped out of site (pun intended) but....I have to keep telling myself... I love my computer! I love my computer! I love my computer!
Well, not so much these days. I've gotten A LOT of good use out of it! But it is getting old and acting very much like it has a virus, which I don't believe is the case...though I will continue to update and scan, scan, scan! (And Mac lovers, don't preach...if you've been keeping up with tech news, you KNOW you're not safe either. Does Flashback ring a bell?) No...not trying to scare you. I've just seen too many "smug" Mac users over the years...and, Smug + Mac = smack!
Anyway, the first inkling I got something was up is when my Task Manager started to look like this:
It's supposed to look like this:
I couldn't close it, let alone expand or minimize it.
I don't know how it happened but it apparently got "minimized" within itself instead of to the Taskbar....? The only way I could close it was by right clicking on the tray icon and checking "close." I thought I'd mention this because it apparently can happen with any Windows XP machine. The quick fix is to double click the gray box. Doing that will expand it to full size.
Whether this is a glitch or not (apparently not), I never knew about it before. I did know about clicking the blue bar across the top but never realized I could double click the gray box and adjust its properties that way, too.
Whenever...
OK, so here I am...again... but I don't know for how long. I did some tweaking to get my machine running again, and it has worked. This is why I don't believe it's virus related, plus the fact that my scans have all been clean. (It actually has been running the entire time...it's Windows that hasn't been loading properly.)
I'll be back in full swing as soon as I can be, either with an upgrade to this computer...or with an entirely new one.
Ciao! Or as Piglet might say.... "Oh, dear. Oh d-d-d-dear, dear!"
7 Responses to O Hard Drive, Where Art Thou?
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But I have this thing running at a bare bones minimum right now. I used my Registry Mechanic to tweak it and that's the only way it will work. Some of it could be fixed by adding more RAM but I don't really want to spend money on an old machine. And MS is going to discontinue support for XP in a couple of years anyway...so I do see Windows 7 just ahead.
I heard Windows 8 doesn't even have a "Start" button. That might be a mistake. I have enough gray hair as it is. :-)
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The switch from old familiar to Windows 7 was excrutiatingly painful (mental) but here we are. I wish I could tell you all was peachy keen, but we still have some screwed up settings that we haven't figured out yet :)
One caution, if you decide to continue to stretch your luck with the current, keep those backups fresh. Even with good intentions, we lost some files a year ago...
KC
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Not smug, just very happy.
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I'm just as happy with my HP machine. It's just getting old now, that's all. But I chose it after reading several reviews...and they were right! It's been an excellent machine.
As for my "Mac lovers" comment in the post...I got quite a few comments over the years from users who said point blank..."Go Mac! They don't get viruses! No need to worry about them." Many have wrongly thought that they were immune to them. Nope. They're not....and I think that's going to become more widely known very soon. But I've actually had very few viruses in my 11 years' time on the web. Updating and using the web wisely can go a long way!
I know of several security experts who believe Apple has been too lax about web security. One even went so far as to say that Microsoft is light years ahead of them because they have dealt with those issues so much down through the years. I think there's probably some truth in that.
http://www.scmagazine.com/apple-is-the-richest-company-in-the-world-but-its-not-very-good-at-dealing-with-malware/article/235575/
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