Saturday 10 October 2009

Terrible News!




I am sitting here on DH's archaic home pc {swish one in the office...} as my pc has died ;-( I have been trying to rectify the problem all day but now it won't even do me the honour of switching itself on ;-( A well & truly sorry state! I am most unhappy as I can't possibly use this "thing" I am on at the moment & have no idea how long my baby will take to "Get well soon", if at all... I am off to the local PC store first thing in the morning. We "fired" our IT man some time ago as he was completely unreliable & I have been coping fine without him & managing to solve all the minor hiccups. We had a power failure (the whole of our suburb) on Wednesday night & I was onile at the time, so of course the pc switched off without shutting down properly. When I switched it back on on Thursday morning a message popped up saying my system had recovered from a blue screen error. I thought it was just because of the power outage & managed to proceed ( following the meassage - Press F1 to continue) but it keeps switching off automatically when I am in Outlook Express & now I can't even get that far before it shuts down automatically.

Of course my recent photos aren't backed up onto disc & I already feel lost without my friend. To top it all today is my First Bloggy Birthday & today's post was meant to be celebratory! Darn. I can't access my inbox from here (as far as I know...) so please bear that in mind if we are in the middle of a conversation LOL! I can do nothing here. None of my images are here. None of my photos are here. Firefox isn't even here! Neither is Google!! I am downgraded to Yahoo! {Shane...c'mon...you can't be serious...} This sucks. I am not one to panic but sincerely hope that none of my information or images are non-recoverable - obviously. I received a message late tonight to say that my parents in Cape Town had just been burgled so I have that concern to contend with too. They are pensioners & survive off very little due to some unwise financial investments my father made with their retirement funds. They visit my sister in hospital at the same time every day {& have been doing so since she has been there since November last year}. Obviously some opportunists have seen the pattern & taken advantage of it as it happened whilst they were out. I'm sure they have no alarm & no insurance.

The problem with making irresponsible choices in life is that there is rarely a time when your poor judgement does not have a serious impact on those around you.

All in all there's no good news to share today.

I hope to be back in Blogland as soon as my dear friend PC is back to full health. Technology slave signing off...


13 comments:

Vicki said...

Hope it makes a full recovery. Can only imagine how frustrating that would be. Hope all is well with your parents then.

Stefanie said...

Shame so sorry about your pc, and trust that you find a new IT person who will be able to retrieve everything for you.
With regards the parents, I have 1 of those 2 and I am an only child. Burglary is terrible though, the loss and the feeling of violation is a hard thing to work through.

Stefanie said...

I also meant to say happy blog-versary.
Can't believe it is one whole year already, and look how far you've come.

topkatnz said...

Sorry to hear about all your dramas - I'm pretty sure your PC will be be recoverable; and I hope things work out for your parents. big hugs xx

Jenny said...

I hope that your parents are okay and recover from this violation of their privacy

Lynette Jacobs said...

Sounds like your poor PC might have a bug?

Sorry to hear about your parents...hope everything is under control and they are not too traumatized.

tania said...

Ag no Helen, so sorry to hear about your parents, hope they are fine by this time. thanks for all your trouble with my kit.i think your computer suffered some brain damage, while you were on holiday, he missed you too much, hope you get him fixed.

CathQuillScrap said...

Not nice news all round for you... shame man! The same thing happened to my pc last year... and I eventually just gave up with it... my harddrive though was fine... so just made it into an external drive and could access all my data... maybe give that a try too.

Ella Swan said...

Thanks girls...my parents are fine - fortunately this happened whilst they were out (although the robbers ran out as they were opening up but Thank God did not harm them) & all they got was what they could carry but ransacked the place in their quest. PC has recovered already. Matrix is the place to go! They took 24 hours (& over the weekend too) & were very reasonable with their charges too. I have a paid anti-virus software now (I no longer have the free AVG) but now have Kaspersky - which is very inexpensive at R219 per year & apparently excellent. It didn't actually have a virus but rather was affected by all the power cuts we have been experiencing lately (who knows why we have been having them???) & the fact that when they happen the computer obviously just switches off & does not shut down through the correct steps. This destabilizes it if it happens often enough. Good news is that I now have my external hard-drive (just for my photos ;-D) & everything transferred there - 320gig - should be big enough to last the rest of my lifetime (apparently the bigger you go the less stable they are...) Woo Hoo! Am so chuffed with it sitting winking at me on my desktop. Gotta love technology ;-D

Sandra said...

No dear! Guess you could look at it as a nice wee technology holiday :) That's what I'd do.

Fingers and toes crossed here that everything is OK for your parents.

Michelle Ramsay said...

Glad your parents were not harmed, but terrible that they got burgled. Glad your PC is better and working like a dream. Terrible when things we rely on so much break down - he he

Ella Swan said...

Well it looks like I may finally be getting a laptop! For Christmas!! But I am still keeping all my stuff here on the pc too...I am paranoid about losing anything or being without it - if even for a time - but so excited - can't wait to take it to M&B, have wanted to do that for years!!! Coffee & blogging...woo hoo!!!

Desire Fourie said...

Oh Helen, I am so sorry to hear about all the bad things happening in your life at the moment, but it often helps just to share them ... and us bloggy friends have broad shoulders. Happy first anniversary ... can't believe its already a year you've been brightening blog land. Wishing you all the best with your technological hitch ... may it be something of the past soon.
Hugs
Desire