My plan was to have all of my cards finished and out at the beginning of this week. That didn't happen.
The problem, mostly, was that computer we got him. The all in one. Remember in my previous entry I mentioned having to find another outlet to run it on? I knew there was something just not right with that.
The screen blacking out did not stop. I added programs. I removed programs. I contacted the manufacturer's support and I was told to install these updates (there were three links, one for the BIOS, one for the chipset and one for the graphics card. "If these don't work, contact us and we'll set up for you to send the unit it for repair.". "Uh, no, this is a new computer, I'll just return it" was my response.
I installed the updates. For about a half hour, there was no flashing. Then it started again.
Frustrated, on Monday, I'd had enough. We would return the machine. I started the process of wiping the hard drive and reinstalling the operating system to factory settings. Got it up and running and it worked. No flashing. Great! Maybe we won't have to return it. It goes into sleep mode. It comes out easily. Just to be safe, it stays on sleep mode overnight. It wasn't turned off.
Tuesday morning, he comes in, brings it out of sleep mode. No monitor. Oh, I can talk to Cortana, but there's nothing on the screen. That's it. I'm done. Start the wipe of the hard drive again. It gets so far and stalls. To hell with it.
I unplug it, take everything apart and it's ready to be returned to CostCo. We were there when they opened.
I hadn't installed my new computer yet, it was still in the box, I was getting his up and running and working on the cards. It's not a priority. After the unit was returned and our card credited, Brian did the shopping and I went to the computer section. Found a really nice model, a Dell XPS, and checking it against the specs for my new computer, the one sitting at home on the coffee table in its box, the HP Envy, this was a more robust unit. 4GB graphics card, 16GB of RAM vs the 12GB of the one on the coffee table. I salivated. We got this computer, and this would be mine and Brian would get the one on the coffee table. He also got a new monitor. The man who worked in the tech area came over and we discussed the problems with the all in one. He said the problem with those is when something goes wrong, the entire system doesn't work. He said he didn't care for them at all. Yeah, me either. It looked nice and was great in concept, but possible downtime was a major consideration.
We get home, in less than three hours I had it up and running, most of the programs he uses installed.
He has had no problems since. And I started working on cards.
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