I got a phone call yesterday from the love of my life, telling me she had killed the computer. Now, to her, “the computer” is the Gateway PC running Windows Vista that she and my son use. My Mac is some arcane devil-machine that she prefers not to touch.
I got the Mac hoping that the family would use it, and I might be able to retire as the house’s IT guru. This hasn’t happened. I still get sucked in to any PC problems that develop. This time, upon hitting an e-mail icon the PC had flirted briefly with a BSOD message, then shut down entirely. All attempts by my wife, my son, and (sad to say) me to power up the machine failed.
I removed the battery and replaced it. Took the power cord off, and plugged it back in. Hit every “F” key on the machine. Nothin’, nada, zip. The only signs of life were the blue light ring around the power button and the pinkish light on the front that indicated the PC was connected to a power source.
Having exhausted my knowledge, I offered to take the machine to Best Buy’s Geek Squad after lunch. There, the ridiculous machine proceeded to humiliate me by powering up for the young lady Geek on the first try. She checked it for viruses and found nothing. An older gentleman, one of the few computer repair types I’ve ever seen older than me, took over and he, too, found no major problems. “The disk is about 33% fragmented, and I’ve seen that do strange things. If I were you, I’d run the disk defragmenter two or three times.”
We discussed virus protection, as I haven’t updated the Trend PC-Cillin on the machine since late last year. Oxy provided it to employees, and when I left Oxy I lost that privilege. While no viruses were found, the older Geek felt like something should be installed. He highly recommended something called Kaspersky, which Best Buy didn’t have in stock.
I tried to get the Geek to run a more comprehensive diagnostic, not wanting to get home and have the PC stubbornly refuse to start again. He said, “I could take your money, but I’d really recommend you just try the defragmentation first.” I offered money, he turned it down.
So, here I sit with the PC defragging at my side. I assume it’s defragging, as it says it is, but all Vista does is show a spinning blue circle next to the “Defragmenting hard disks…” message, so I really don’t know if anything is happening. The circle has been spinning for about three hours now. Anyway, we’ll see if this does the trick, and I’ll load Kaspersky once it arrives. Then, I hope I can ignore the PC for a good, long, time.
