Absent

Well some of you have noticed that I have been missing all week and some of you haven't.  I'm not sure if that is good or bad!  It has been a busy and very stressful week here.  On top of which I have had major computer problems and it has just been too difficult to do any more than read a few blogs here and there.

My main desk top computer is very sick and I already explained the difficulties of blogging from my mini lap top.  I tried over the course of the week to do what I could for my sick PC but nothing worked, in fact it got worse and wouldn't even boot into safe mode.  I was fairly sure that it was some kind of hard ware problem so yesterday we bit the bullet and took it to PC World.

We were in luck, we were served by Danny an ex pupil of Simons who also did all of his exams with me so we both know him well.  He is a nice boy.  I told him the problem, that I had the blue screen of death and that I thought it was hard ware related.  He opened it up to take a quick look and said he was fairly sure that the graphics card was kaput.  So buy a new graphics card and problem solved then?

We wanted them to fit it as neither of us have ever done that.  He asked the technician and he said they couldn't do that as it may not solve the problem!  I think they wanted us to book it in for a full diagnostic thingy which is £70 just to be told what is wrong!

Danny also thought that there was a possibility that just wiping it and reinstalling might work. I didn't want to do that as I have too much stuff on there that isn't saved elsewhere. In the end, to cut quite a long story short, Danny sold us a hard drive enclosure which lets you take out your hard drive and covert it to an external drive which you can then plug into another computer to retrieve your files.  (cost £25)

His advice is retrieve everything that I want. Reinstall the hard drive back into the PC, wipe it and reinstall and hope that works.  If it doesn't he is sure that it is the graphics card so he says to buy one and insert it ourselves, he says it isn't hard. If it doesn't solve the problem he said they will refund it.  (The cheapest graphics card is £35).

If that doesn't work it is new computer time.  It would cost too much to make it worth while any other repairs.  Probably somewhere in the region of £250 and you can get a new basic one for £300.

So today I have taken out the hard drive and installed it in the enclosure thingy.  I have now transferred all my files to my mini lap top so that is good.  I have just dusted the inside of my PC and I am about to reinstall the hard drive.  Once I have it all hooked up to everything again I shall begin the process of wiping and reinstalling the operating system.  Fingers crossed that will sort it.  If not we shall return to PC World at some point in the week to get a graphics card.

So that is where I am at. Now I have all my photos on here I am going to download open office and hopefully I will be able to resume blogging soon.  I'll be playing catch up big time with the DPT!

Keep your fingers crossed and send good vibes to my sick PC.