Categories Blog Computer Woes Personal

More Computer Woes (But Not Mine!)

Picture from Pixabay

So we ended up emergency going out and buying a new laptop for my Mom and her SO. She called me yesterday evening that their laptop was throwing up an errors, and eventually it wouldn’t boot at all. She managed to take a photo of the error one time, and googling lead me to the conclusion that – considering the laptop was going on 14 years old – its hard drive was dying. We’d already been talking about buying a new one for a couple of years because it was so slow and probably wouldn’t even be ab, and Mom said she didn’t like to use it because of that anymore, and that she’d like to be able to watch Yle Areena video web service (it’s all jerky and stopping entirely after a bit on the old laptop) on the computer because they don’t have a smart tv yet (she wants one of those too now). But her SO wasn’t keen on a new laptop because they use it so little. But hard drive dying  solved the problem, and now they have a shiny new Acer Aspire 5 that has Windows 10 on it and is Windows 11 ready and can run Yle Areena without any problems. Their old laptop had Linux Mint on it, and Mom wants it on the new one too (Windows gets on her nerves while Linux is smooth sailing once its all setup), but it took all the time and energy we had today just to make the Windows ready for them so we happily left Linux Mint for the next time.

It was a good thing I’d already talked to them about needing a new laptop sooner rather than later, so Mom had been looking at them somewhat already and they were both mentally prepared for the idea already. I do all the installing and help a lot with the choosing when it comes to phones, televisions and computers for my Mom so I spent this afternoon installing Windows and getting it how we like it. I have to say that I love how fast the initial install is now – just only about 20-30 minutes and I can start setting all the custom programs up. What I don’t love is the need for the Microsoft account but I guess I can live with it, although my Mom hated it – luckily I remembered she has Skype so we were able to use that. The new laptop is an Acer Aspire 5 and 15”, their old one was 17,3” so it’ll take some getting used to having a smaller one. 

Now we only need to get my Mom a new phone – she dropped her Doro smartphone a few months ago and it’s never been right after that. Keeps turning off, or heating up. At first we thought we’d pick up Doro 8080 at the same time as the laptop, but then she decided that it’s too much mentally to get both a new laptop and a phone the same day, and also that she’d like to get it from the regular department store instead of a specialty store like the laptop. So we didn’t get one today, but I expect it’ll happen during August. She really into Doro, and want the fingerprint reader like I have in my Huawei, so Doro 8080 looks like it’ll be the next.

The heat wave is over for now 😀 and it rained a lot today 🙂 It’s so humid though my head didn’t like it, and it was made worse with the sudden need to go computer shopping and then getting it all in working order made my heart hurt worse because of the stress. Not sure if it’s gonna be a migraine attack, could go either way.

Categories Blog Computer Woes

Windows 10

Picture from Pixabay.

Ended up re-installing Windows 10 from scratch, and like always before, that solved all the problems! No more slowness or jerky mouse. Everything is faster now and the touchpad mouse is smooth again, and even Photoshop got a lot faster. Glad I did it – even though getting all my programs re-installed and all the Windows settings as I like them took a whole day – ’cause it feels almost like a new laptop again!

It’s so stupid Windows requires doing this about every year or two. I’ve had Linux Mint installed for like five years now and it’s upgraded every time there’s a new version, but it never gets slower or gives me any other problems like Windows does after X number of upgrades.

Random Notes
Categories Blog Computer Woes Weather

Random Notes

  • It’s the first cool day of the summer!!! 😀  I’m so happy – I can breathe again! Forecast says it should be like this until Saturday when it’ll start to climb day by day until it’s again 30 on Tuesday next week. I just hope there won’t another stretch of uninterrupted heatwave for another month or month and a half going into August.
  • This site seems slow/unresponsive today. Hope it’s nothing serious. Activated Cloudflare again on all sites – it seems to get slow after a couple of months every time, so I’ll deactivate it for a while, and when I reactivate, it’s good again.
  • My laptop seems slower after the last couple of Windows 10 updates, and the mouse got sort of jerky after the latest update. Trying to decide if I should re-install Windows 10 from scratch but I don’t really want to. I wonder if it’s that my laptop is getting too unpowerful for Windows 10 (according to the minimum specs for W10 it shouldn’t be anywhere near too weak) or if it’s just the typical Windows crap when it has upgraded itself to a new version multiple times like has happened before and installing the newest version cleanly always solved that. It’s stupid – I’ve installed multiple upgrades of Linux Mint when it offers them, and Mint never gets weird and buggy and jerky – it’s as smooth as ever.
Categories Computer Woes

Computer Woes Over Again – New Laptop Is Here!

Got my new laptop yesterday  (it’s Asus G750JM), and it’s very lovely 😀 Very quiet and cool to the touch even after hours of usage, and the best monitor of any of my old laptops ever. The keyboard also feels better than in my last one. It even has one empty hard drive bay, and one empty memory slot 😀 Thank you Mom for the wonderful gift!

The only problem was Asus Splendid thingy which turned colors very warm, orangy but once I figured out that was what was causing it and uninstalled it, colors are now normal 😀

I’m going to install the new hard drive I bought just a few months ago for the old laptop into the spare slot in this new one, but run into a problem with the screws in the old laptop’s hard drive bay thingy. Just need to get them unstuck – may need to buy new screwdrivers (my old ones I think aren’t sharp enough anymore) and/or go with it somewhere with the proper tools to get them unstuck.

 

Categories Computer Woes

Computer Woes Update – New Laptop Ordered

We ordered a new laptop yesterday; it’ll take up to 3 days for them to deliver it so maybe I’ll get it tomorrow but more likely after the weekend.

Until I get the new laptop, there won’t be any screencap uploads – this laptop can’t handle capping anymore, or things like sorting lots of photos/caps or programs such as Photoshop without over-heating. Right now I’m limited to light stuff like browsing, online banking and e-mail.