Hello Computer!

I've just spent the last five hours or so wrestling with my laptop - which is now working again having tried to die in February. I'm too *!"!!%* to do anything other than post the drawing of Willow Pond which went on Watermarks very early this morning (see Cloudscape - Willow Pond).

For those who who'd like to know the issues which crop up when drawing water - check out the watermarks post.

For those who want to know what's involved in reviving a dead laptop without visiting your favourite repair person read on..............

Cloudscape - Willow Pond
coloured pencils on Arches HP
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

OK - now this is just a theory - but it's my theory! When a laptop battery runs down I think the laptop forgets what was stopping it starting up so you've got a chance to recover the situation. I tried doing the "take the battery out, wait awhile and then pop it back in again" tactic when it died back in February - but with no luck.

This morning the big computer froze yet again and I've now decided that I've got a registry problem and there is a file missing or corrupted somewhere.

So I decided it was now time to pay a visit to the repair man. But not before I tried just one more time to get the laptop started!

So I switched on - and got past the black screen. This time it came up with a "This computer did not shut down properly last time - here are your options for what you can now do"

so

• I started in safe mode
• and it came up!
• so I plugged in the external hard disc and shifted all docs and pics over to the external hard disc - this took forever (ie but the laptop was now ready to go to the repair man if need be)
• then I tried the system restore option
• I decided to go back to the end of January - about three weeks before the major problems started
  
• I then did a system restore (which was very very very slow)
• once it finished I then started it up again in the normal way - and it started normally - but very slowly
• soI closed down and started up again - and it worked better
• then I found the security suite wouldn't update and the blacklist had gone missing and the laptop generally didn't like it
• so I got out of all programs and reinstalled the security suite and then started up again
  
• then I connected - and this time it updated the virus database which was obsolete
  
• and then it wanted to restart AGAIN!
  
• so I did
• but it didn't notice!!!
• so I closed down and then went and made a very late lunch
• came back and started up AGAIN!!!!
  
• and this time it noticed that it had updated
• and then i started doing the windows updates.................

I'm knackered!

So what did I miss while I was back with XP and a mega screen?

I missed

• the sidebar in Vista Desktop - and specifically the clock and the continually changing pictures (which I use for auditioning photos prior to using them as references for artwork. Anything which catches my eye when I'm not looking at it has a strong design)
• the bit in Elements 5 which allows you to correct photos which have got a barrel distortion (I'm still running 3 on the older machine)
• the lovely soft responsive non-confrontational keyboard of my Sony Vaio which is so much better for my tenosynovitis. Going back to my big Microsoft wireless keyboard was horrendous!
• not having a problem with websites which need to have their font size adjusted to make them capable of being read on a big screen (it doesn't seem to present as quite such a major problem on a laptop)
• all the files that I'd not got round to backing up!

Now I think I might have a go at doing a system restore on the old computer - I've found the advice about how to do a system restore in XP.