Up Again—Sort Of

continued from previous post...

 

After sitting up all night at the 'puter, running Windows diagnostic procedures at 4 hours per attempt, I was able to get into the Dell "Diagnose and Repair" software, which seemed very well hidden. It took a long time to run—most of the night, actually—but when it finished I had Windows running again. Sort of. My PC now boots into Windows, but it's an earlier version of Windows that was stashed in a hidden partition somewhere on the drive. So the repair software re-installed Windows from that version in the partition. To do that it had to move a lot of my stuff off the drive and onto another drive, then after the repair it moved my stuff back to the C-drive. All my programs were gone. And lots of other stuff, like all my programming tools, my Thunderbird emails, and other items too numerous to mention. I doubt I know yet half of what's lost. 

 

And the computer behaves funky at times. I installed the Edge browser but it won't run more than 30 seconds without crashing. Open Live Writer, my blogging tool, installed but will not run. Some other programs would not even install. Their installer would open and shut without doing anything. Down in the lower right corner of my screen there is the label "Windows 8.1 Build 9600" that was not there before the crash, don't need, and don't know how to eliminate. There are many other differences, some subtle, and some are just in-your-face.

I look at it this way. I can "get by" and take my time shopping for a replacement PC. The end-of-year sales will be coming up in another six weeks, so I'll wait for them and maybe save a few bucks.

Fortunately, many of my documents, images, and videos were either backed up or located on an external drive. It might be time to archive the external backup drives and replace them with a single fresh drive. Although, product reviews are replete with stories of new drives failing within days or weeks of being turned on.

 
Meanwhile, I can browse the web with a "real" PC and a "real" monitor and keyboard instead of the tiny box that filled in while this PC was down. But I'm glad I had the little box. I had already begun PC shopping using it. How did I even live before the Internet? I cannot remember those dark years of no World Wide Web and no email. I understand the teenagers who walk around like zombies, eyes glued to their cell phones. I do it too—I'm just not walking around.