Crash and Burned?

    One of my laptop computers died the other day, as in gone.  Yes, tried all the tricks, of holding the power button down while disconnecting the power cable, the F12 button (and all the others), the pulling out the battery, that sort of stuff.  But it was gone.  Hey, it happens.  And ever since being robbed last summer, I've been a bit more fanatic about backing things up and had purchased a rather inexpensive twin to the laptop to serve as an additional backup, this in addition to an external hard drive AND the cloud.  So truth be told, very little (at least that I can remember) was lost.  But one never really knows, for stored among those lost gigabytes of data were photos, documents of whatever, and other things, most of which I couldn't even conjure up (in addition to the external drive and the cloud, I had burned almost all of my photos and music to CDs and had also placed many of those files on sim cards).  They were likely trivial bits of days long past, gathered as surely as the big container of random nuts and bolts in the garage now serving no purpose other than that once-in-a-great-while eureka moment when I needed a makeshift repair done and voila, there was a screw that would almost fit (in the meantime, the container just takes up room).  I thought of this when I again stared at my bookshelf, one which I think I have pared down to its essentials and yet it sits there still staring back at me as surely as those collections of photos stored on the CDs, alone in a pile and beginning to overflow like a wave of guilt.  As with my dead laptop, all those "valuable" items in storage will likely rarely if ever get re-looked at or re-read (or read at all since another large pile of unread material sits there waiting), their purpose (perhaps as with myself) fading away or long gone, holding meaning to few and about ready to be discarded, perhaps even unworthy of donation.  Such is life...

   But fear not for my backup computer (yes, another even cheaper twin since such models with Windows 7 are now rather antiquated) is running fine and steadily gathering ever more files and photos).  But then a couple of things happened...I went to Sedona (as written in several earlier posts) and placed one of these posts while on a public Wi-Fi network at the hotel.  And about the same time, I received an official-looking "critical" update notice from Firefox, complete with Firefox's symbol and image colors and which began downloading automatically.  I quickly shut down the computer since I couldn't click the "close" button on the download fast enough, and held my breath (turns out it was a fake bit of advertising malware, as reported in one of many reports).  Soon, I turned my computer back on and ran my anti-virus program and phew, all appeared clear.  Then I cleaned my computer of all cookies and its cache and phew, that also passed.  But my laptop was running a bit odd, or so it seemed...terribly slow.  Was it the open Wi-Fi I had used (on a side note, I try to write everything offline and then simply paste and post and link as needed, thus spending as little time as possible when using an "open" network).  So I did a trial run of an anti-malware program once I returned home and it discovered 55 possible malware placements (which it quarantined and removed).  Fifty-five...and all in a matter of minutes (or possibly seconds) from that one fake critical update.  Or was it?  Was it that live attack or was it just from just running my laptop on an open network (some programs advise you to run encrypted WiFi privacy programs when using such public WiFi's...which I didn't).  And then my backup-backup laptop begin to act a bit odd (which made sense since these laptops are all rather old so a good portion of that is likely just wear and tear)...so yes, I bit the bullet and bought a new basic laptop with far more speed and storage capacity than my earlier models and excitedly followed the quick-start guide to getting online in a fast and modern way.  And that's where my next set of problems began.

    Now unlike many of you, I am not that technically savvy when it comes to computers, even if I am rather fascinated when talking with such "geeks" who work in support and who can answer and solve such computer problems with ease (one quick note, such problem solving is sometimes a bit more difficult for them when they have to work with older systems such as mine, for the newer generation of techies on the other end of the chat are generally finding no reason to study such old material and thus I am often bumped up to Level 2 or Level 3 to have my problem resolved...think of taking in your old cell phone and discovering that your once-new model has already been long discontinued and is now unsupported).  So back to my new laptop: I opened it, ran through all the intros and watched as it immediately asked me to update Windows 10 (see, I'm already out of date since the new systems are running Windows 11); the update screen runs for about 45 minutes (the screen does tell you that it will take awhile), then finishes and jumps to another screen that says it is validating the update and install, then it falls back to the updating screen (this may take awhile again comes on), then validating and install, then updating.  What???  So I quickly install a cleaning program, one that will dump the cache (this often solves many problems) and will wipe out the older data blockng the install; then I also add my anti-virus program and...well, my brand new computer locks up.  Hmm...

   So let's jump a minute to Costco, that monstrous warehouse store that has the buying power of a government and runs neck and neck or ahead of WalMart in sales (a recent article in Fortune more aptly describes this competition as watched by investors).  Anyway, one of their services when you buy anything electronic (from computers to televisions) is to not only extend your warranty an additional year or two but to also offer what they term "concierge" service to help you install the item or work out any problems (they also have a no-questions-asked return policy).  I've never used that service (a male thing since we men can figure just about anything out, even if it takes us an inordinate amount of time and often comes out far from the expected result...sort of like us never asking for directions).  But with this brand new computer acting up, a call was in order and to my surprise, their "techies" were extremely proficient.  Here's what he told me...

   My laptop had been constructed (the term is "built" since generally 500 or so are loaded and running at the same time in the factory, each using the same master software image ) on December 9, 2016 and since three months had passed, the number of Windows 10 updates was likely quite large, probably numbering seven or eight updates which accounted for the updating and verifying messages repeating themselves over and over; each update has to "build" on the other update vs. just loading the most recent update he said, so it's important to wait for each to finish downloading.  Quite likely, since I had tried to install additional programs before the updates were finished, I had unknowingly corrupted the system...let's check, he said (and after 20 minutes of tests, he thought that such a result was likely).  We'll have to reset the system to its factory settings and remove all the "bloatware" that comes with any new computer.  Then came the dreaded words...this may take awhile.  It did, as in several hours, which crept into several more hours, then leaked into the next day.  The good news, he said, is that I could walk away and let the computer do its thing; turns out that updating software is quite different from resetting your computer; the latter (as in when you use a recovery disc, although most new laptops no longer carry optical drives so even that option will be available only via download) basically overrides any commands you might have entered into your computer, such as saving power by going to sleep or shutting down after so many hours of you not typing on the keyboard or drawing on the touchscreen.  So walk away I did, and after several hours returned to see that 8% of the task was finished...time to go to bed. 

   But wait, I was to learn that there was more, much more (and this post is already appearing to grow exponentially)...so here's your dreaded words: to be continued.