Number 303 - August 2008

Be Careful What You Ask For Part II
by Richard Kennon, Newsletter Editor, Amador Computer Users Group, California
I got it! Wow, it looks just like every other computer. Perhaps you will remember last month I reported I had received a new Samsung 22-inch wide screen display that my old computer would not feed. One thing led to another and I commissioned a local computer store to build a new computer for me. It has a 250 Gbyte SATA hard drive, 2 Gbyte RAM and an AMD 64x2 dual processor. Also, it is loaded with XP Home operating system. I went into the "why" last month. I was so proud of my smarts when I copied all "My Documents" to an 80 Gbyte backup hard drive and then had the store transfer this drive to the new box. But, when I went to access it, the latest copy had not taken. Bummer! Then I started to copy the files onto a flash drive to transfer them. About that time the old computer went bonkers - out of spite, I suppose. After many tries I got most of what I wanted transferred. I won't bore you with sordid details.    The first priority was to load the McAfee firewall and virus protection. I went to the McAfee site and mucked around for a while and finally got into a chat with someone called, Anish, on the other side of the globe, probably. He offered to help and led me through the most complicated procedure I have ever followed including typing Windows-R and typing in "%temp%." Then he said to delete all the files that popped up. There were about 250 files and perhaps 10 or 20 did not wish to be deleted. Every time I got to one that would not be deleted, I clicked 'OK' and had to start over again. After we finally got through that, he gave me a web site to access and everything went smoothly from there.    The next anguish was trying to load the HP printer drivers for my two printers. That appeared to go well at first but later something went very wrong and Microsoft volunteered that the problem was caused by Hewlett Packard and that HP had a fix on a site I could click to. That is	really nice service! So, I did everything the HP site said to do but it kept failing with a message outlining three possible causes - none of which seemed to apply from the best I could determine. At that juncture, I decided to drop back to square-one and try to reload the driver in question from the disk. First, it was necessary to uninstall the driver and then re-install it. I did this but failed to read the fine print. It is clear now that one cannot install the driver if the printer is plugged into the computer. So, uninstall and re-install again but do it right this time, dummy. What do you know? It worked!    I reloaded MS Office 2003 Professional that I had been using for some time. That went quite well. Then I downloaded Service Pack 2 (or, is it 3?) and the Compatibility Pack I wrote about last month. That went well, also. It is interesting how even old people can learn, isn't it?    Next came Photoshop Elements 5.0 and after that will come TOPO!, which is a map program I like and several other smaller programs, including my Nikon camera software.    All in all, it has been not as bad an experience as it might have been and not as good as wished for. The backup hard disk is/was a great idea but somehow I fumbled the execution. My only advice is that if you want to get a new computer, plan, plan, plan and then consult as many others, who might have gone through it, as possible.    This article has been provided to APCUG by the author solely for publication by APCUG member groups. All other uses require the permission of the author (editor(at)acug.org)    Copyright (C) 2002-2008 Interactive Computer Owners Network All Rights Reserved
Number 303 - August 2008