Argh! The Frustration!

[mbarker]

I have an FMV-P8270, a little notebook computer, that I really like and use at home, on weekends, and when traveling. And I have Windows Vista, which despite various folks assuring me that I must hate it, I have not had problems with. I let it tell me when there are updates, and most of the time, I just apply them...

But today, before noon, it assured me there was an update. So I let it proceed. And... when I turned it back on, the screen stayed dark. That's odd. Let's try that again. Crash and reboot. Dark screen, although the disk is doing something. Okay... crash, boot in safe mode. Huh, looks okay. Let's try regular mode again.

Apparently the update (Intel Graphics Media Accelerator Driver) doesn't work. So... uninstall. And ... still no go. Okay, let's find that... download, install, and -- what do you mean, one component failed, so you aren't going to install?

It's now about 5 hours later, and despite various downloads and whatnot, the system still won't show a screen on a regular boot.

I've also learned that Dragon NaturallySpeaking requires a normal boot (apparently the media drivers for little things like microphones aren't considered necessary for safe mode, which means those of us who depend on such things are SOL). So I'm making my fingers ache.

ARGGH! And I like computers!

Comments

[dialyn.livejournal.com]

Should I ask how it is going now? I love computers when everything goes the way it is, but they are the most frustrating things when something goes wrong.

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Mid-afternoon Monday -- I think I've got it more-or-less working again. Right now I'm using the office computer, but I did the backups, restored programs, and so forth... irritating how much time it takes to fix something like this, and I'm still not completely sure why it failed. Oh, well, now I've got a nice complete backup, and I learned a little bit more about fixing this kind of problem. And reminded myself not to spend so much time on the computer, too -- it was actually kind of peaceful not having a computer over the weekend, even if it did make me antsy because of the stuff I wanted to get done.