Sunday 7 February 2010

Sunday, February 7th 2010 - the non-origami post

As I am keeping my origami under wraps this weekend, i thought i'd tell you a completely non related story. I'm going to tell you what happened when I tried to upgrade my laptop to windows 7 all by myself.
Now in computer literacy terms, i would class myself as medium. I can work a computer and solve some easy problems. and i try not to cry when it crashes. oh and i now keep a blog, i think that brings points up a bit. although that might be internet usage points. anyway, i do know that more complicated tasks, such as upgrading my operating system, should be undertaken under supervision.
So i was planning on doing it this weekend, under the watchful eye of my highly computer literate boyfriend (in other words, he was going to do it and I was going to pretend to understand what was going on). Unfortunately, said boyfriend was unable to make it this weekend. Leaving me with a completely empty weekend on my hands (I tend to clear my diary when i know he's coming for w visit). So i thought i was clever enough to upgrade by myself (I did check he would be able to help me on the phone if necessary, just in case).
So the first i was told to do was back up my data. easy. and im not going to add a but here, i actually managed to fit everything i wanted to keep on my external hard drive without having to delete any crucial files.....
Next, i had to insert the CD and tell the program I was not an american, i was in fact british.
Then i assumed the next stage was to press go and leave it for a bit. so i pressed go, and it started going. I thought i could just leave it. so i did. I went downstairs to play super mario bros on the wii.
One hour later i came back to discover i had to press next before it would start....... i pressed next, then went back to mario.
half an hour later i came back upstairs. My computer said it was shutting down. 10 minutes later it was still shutting down. i decided to ignore it and go back to mario.
Half an hour later, my housemate shouts down the stairs that it's finished. I reluctantly shut down the wii and come upstairs to inspect the damage.
Things seem to be ok.... its obviously deleted all my programs so i'll have to redownload them. oh wait. its internet explorer. i hate internet explorer. all its "improvements" are poor versions of awesomeness in firefox. so once i got my anti virus back, i went and got firefox back. phew, feeling a little more comfortable.
By the way at this stage im not very comfortable because the differences between vista and windows 7 are subtle, so i click things expecting something to happen and instead something completely different and quite different happens instead.
anyway, i spend two hours retrieving all my programs, sorting through all my emails (all the while ringing the boyfriend every half hour because a message has popped up i dont understand).
Now so far i havent done anything wrong.... I mean, i even remembered antivirus. but on the "how to upgrade" instructions, it tells me to go get the drivers... I asked the boyfriend about this. He said dont bother, if everything's working, leave it alone. I took this advice to mean that if it's not working, i should try and fix it...
So i wanted to check that i could still play DVDs. Put a DVD in and it worked. Good.
Later, housemate and I decide to watch the butterfly effect (film i really enjoy, except for the scene when ashton kutcher claims memories are stored in the outer layer of the cerebral cortex). Problem: DVD doesn't load. In fact, DVD player doesn't appear to exist at all. So i decide to go onto the samsung website and download something to fix it. I google all the terms and somehow decide that the solution to my problem is to download something called BIOS.
Now, judging from my boyfriend's reaction when i recounted this tale to him, this was a mistake, and should have blown my laptop into smitherines (im quite glad it didnt). Now in the short term it did seem to make the dvd player work again, but ever since the dvd player has existed one minute, then disappeared the next. it's baffling.
Boyfriend is going to attempt to repair the damage next weekend.
So now I have windows 7. Im not sure i like it yet (haven't recovered from upgrading), but i reckon in a week it will have grown on me.
Tomorrow we go back to origami.....

2 comments:

  1. I think you did very well, and from what you say you did no great damage by downloading BIOS. How do you find the time to watch tv, eat, do your work, and make origami things too! I am deeply impressed

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  2. BIOS? Yikes!

    While you're at it - have you tried Chrome? It's like Firefox but better!

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