Mostly Computers and Other Things

Manda's been having problems with her computer. She brought it home last weekend and we tested it out. It appeared to work fine here so she took it back home. When I spoke to her last week, she said that it rebooted, probably after installing the most recent Windows update, but got stuck at the "finding IDE drives" part of the BIOS POST. Her previous problems she thought were caused by the hard drive. We got her computer into the BIOS and it showed the hard drive fine there, and after that, it booted fine. I'm thinking that maybe her hard drive is on its way out, and sometimes works and not so she's supposed to be getting a new hard drive today and will install it. Hopefully that fixes the problem, if not, it's something else that's acting up, which I and she both dread. Her, because of cost factors in fixing it, and me, because it will be a pain to try to diagnose. The hard drive is the easy fix. Luckily when she was here over the weekend, we were able to transfer all her critical files across my network and burn them to DVDs from my computer. So she's set on backups.

I recently got myself a USB external hard drive. It's a Seagate 160GB (which is really about 150GB because of the true conversion from bytes to GB. 1,000 bytes is not really a KB, it's more like 1,024 bytes, and on from there.) Anyhow, I really like the drive. At first I had a little trouble sharing it with my computers on my network, but thanks to Chuck's advice in the microsoft.public.windowsxp.network_web Newsgroup, I now unshare it in Computer Management rather than Windows Explorer and it then will disconnect from my computer with no problems. I can back up all my files from all my computers to this hard drive and even will be able to take it to school with me and more easily bring home files that they allow us to take without having to burn them to a zillion CDs. Really cool.

About Newsgroups. For anyone who wants to get good information and help regarding thier computers, Newsgroups are great. All you need is a good Newsgroup Reader (Outlook Express has that ability) and subscribe to the newsgroups you're interested in. You need to check with your ISP and see what newsgroup access they offer so you can connect to that one. There are also many forums on the net that are full of info too.

More news. I talked to my boss Thursday and he agreed to pay for my classes. So, I got reimbursed for my A+ Class and will be taking the Network+ Class beginning in March. This is great. It's nice to get some education and not have to pay for it. And, in the end, it will benefit him since I'll have more knowledge to manage their computers and network in the future.