Tuesday, March 29, 2005

"We interrupt your normal productivity to bring you this special technology problem"

If that error message doesn't yet exist, someone ought to create it to explain the process whereby the computer that you purchased to serve your needs has at some point (I assume late at night) conspired with your other network devices--including your Internet gateway and your other computers--to enact a coup d'etat and to bring you into servitude to them.

I just moved my primary computer from my main office (with DSL) to my home office (with ISDN--there is no such thing as DSL or cable in the tin-can and string phone configurations of the high country of Colorado) because I had planned to spend more time there and less time at the main office. Within a week of doing that, the ISDN router decides it's seen enough and wants to call it quits. The problem is, you can't just walk into a Best Buy and purchase an ISDN router--they have to be specially ordered, if you can find them at all. And so, off to my main office with my laptop. The problem is, my just-over-one-year-old laptop (you know, that special time just after the warranty has expired) has decided it has seen enough DVDs and CDs. On top of that, it has digested so many installed and uninstalled programs over the past year that the registry resembles the human nervous system and the hard drive has more file fragments than files. The result is, it takes the better part of ten minutes for my laptop to bootup all the way; and opening a web browser takes about half that time.

Long story short, I am performing some much needed maintenance on my laptop as I write this. Defraging the hard drive was an all-night vigil (it took 20 hours), and now I am running all the diagnostic and fix tools, including AdAware, Spybot, Registry Mechanic, Registry compressor, and Reg Vac. I've turned down all the "high quality" options and set them to "high performance" instead, removed the background, and selected a classic look. When that's done, another scan disk and defrag just for good measure. At the same time, I'll be looking for an ISDN modem. Needless to say, I have my day (or two) cut out for me, so the blog will have to wait. Be back soon.