Well, I think the HP tech was mistaken, I don’t think my hard drive is on the brink of failing. I had some problems Friday, I had to install QuickBooks on Brian’s computer and print out the stuff for the insurance auditor. I spent two hours on the phone with Intuit support (QuickBooks) with no resolution to the problem. I signed up for the monthly service, which I can cancel at any time. It’s $75.00 for the first month, $25.00 a month thereafter, with 24/7 support.
I figure I’ll keep it active for the first month, then cancel, since I should have the new disk drive up and running in that time.
I was able to get into my files, even run the computer after doing the PC Recovery that came with the system. Problem was it overwrote some of the existing information and most programs didn’t run properly, even after re-installing. Thankfully, I’ve got the two external hard drives, so I transferred the important stuff over to them so I didn’t have to install things from the ground up. And I kinda sorta had a guide as to what I needed to reinstall. Some of the programs aren’t running because the licenses aren’t taking (boo!) and I’m not getting responses from their support, but I attribute that to the weekend. I don’t think they’re real big companies.
Get right down to it, there’s really only one that I’m having a problem with, but I’m sure that will be taken care of tomorrow. Monday.
I do like my new KVM switch, it’s great. Since I wore out the left button on the old mouse, I ordered a new one. I’ve got a $42.00 voucher from Microsoft, from the settlement, so I figured no big deal. Well, yesterday at CostCo, I was looking at keyboards and mice and got a set. I’ll use the new mouse I ordered online with the laptop. Brian didn’t really care for the mouse I was using. Too small and too slow. Heh. I was worried they wouldn’t work with the Gateway, since it’s Windows 98SE (which I can run my old games on, since it has true DOS). The box didn’t say anything about supporting Win 98SE and when I put the disk in to load up the drivers, it pretty much stuck its tongue out at me. Wouldn’t even start the disk.
But the wireless keyboard and mouse did work, even without the software being installed. That’s fine with me, as long as I can open files and type in words, I’m not complaining. Last week, I had two mice (the wireless didn’t work with the old KVM switchbox so I had a wired mouse for the Gateway, a wireless for the HP) and one wired keyboard. Today, I’ve got one keyboard, one mouse and NO WIRES! It’s great!
So, I’ve got the computer pretty much how I want it and I’ll start backing it up to one of the external hard drives. I’ll move everything that’s currently on that drive over to the other external drive, so all that will be on it is the backup for the computer. Then, when the new replacement drive gets here this week, I’ll run one of the disk cleaners (too much personal and business information on this system to trust anyone with it) that overwrites the hard drive with gibberish, pull out the old drive, install the new drive and restore all of the files that I’ve backed up. Which I’m planning on having the whole system backed up. Right now, it’s under 42 gig. The backing up and the restoring is what will take so much time. And I hope since I’m planning on reinstalling the entire thing, I won’t have a problem with relicensing programs. Blech. If everything goes the way I hope it does, I shouldn’t be down more than two days.
One of the nice things about the reformat and reinstall, this computer is sure a lot more responsive. I know a lot of unused programs are no longer installed.
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