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      Thursday, October 23, 2014


geekstuff
11:00 AM - 10/23/2014

The topic: Annoying little computer issues

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My internal card reader quit working. It came with the computer, it's one of those 15 in 1 types of deals. There are four slots, I know the one for compact flash cards works, but my workhorse slot, the one for SD cards, is sporadic. There's no rhyme or reason why it won't read the card. I can read the cards in Brian's computer (he has the same make and model as I do).  They work fine using a USB adapter. I tried updating the driver but that's kind of hard when it's a generic product and there is no updated driver.

So, I went on eBay and found a replacement card reader for this computer. It was used, but the description said it was in good condition. I bought it for ten bucks, free shipping. It's been sitting here for a couple of weeks and yesterday after realizing that an updated driver wouldn't help, I changed out the old one for the replacement. It works better, but it still didn't read some of the cards (I have a bunch of cards that have the tiny flash cards that fit into adapters). I started going through every single one of my memory cards, setting aside the ones that weren't being read. They all had the same brand of adapter. And those didn't work in Brian's PC, either. 

I took the flash card out and tried different adapters. The computer saw them. 

So, those adapters (three of them) went into the trash. And now I can read my cards without having to plug in the USB adapter. 

Changing out the card reader took less than fifteen minutes. Testing each card took about a half hour. So frustrating.

Yesterday, I flipped over to the camera computer and it was frozen. Dammit, nothing ran. Well, it's been looking pretty dusty, probably running pretty hot, so I turned it off, unplugged everything and opened up the case. I pulled off sheets of lint and dust. Then I took it back to Brian's shop and used the compressor hose to blow out the dust. I warned him that it was pretty dusty so he moved the link he'd just painted so it didn't get messed up. I had to hold the hose away from the computer because it puts out a pretty strong blast of air. Man, what a mess. I did the same thing to the front cover, it was pretty bad, too.

Got it put back together, back in the house and everything plugged in, up and running smoothly. That took less than a half hour.

I'm getting good at this stuff.


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lisaviolet is seventy something, married with no kids, takes care of lots of cats, likes taking photographs, loves Southern California weather and spends altogether too much time avoiding her responsibilities.

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