Category: Computer Woes

New Laptop At Long Last!
Posted on
Oct 2, 2024

New Laptop At Long Last!

I’m so exited! Mom bought me a new laptop for my 50th birthday which will be in a month. It’s a Lenovo ThinkBook 16 G6; we bought it online on Monday and it was ready for pickup yesterday afternoon in the store! I of course went immediately! 🥳😍

It’s 16″ and has 32GB of RAM, Ryzen 7 and 1TB hard drive with Windows 11 Pro. I got it all done installing Windows and Lenovo things yesterday and it laptop seems wonderful! I love the keyboard, how thin and light it is, how quiet it is and that it stays cool all the time so far. It also doesn’t that much smaller than my old 17,3″ one which I was worried about – I don’t have a TV so I watch TV on my laptop and it needs to be bigger because of that, and larger also feels more comfortable to do work on my websites or whatever. 

I don’t think I’ve ever owned a computer/laptop that didn’t have problems when just bought – this time is no different. There’s 3 problems:

  1. The mouse pad doesn’t react to clicking its “buttons” but moving the cursor and tapping works normally. I noticed from the settings that tapping with two fingers works to open a context menu (which is a new feature to me) but I’m unable to click a button and drag items or click and select (text) or click and scroll pages. I’m not sure whether this is a Windows 11 problem or a Lenovo problem.
  2.  AMD error notice says that AMD software and AMD drivers are incompatible – I’ve googled a bit and might be some hybrid setting that needs to be on (or maybe off?). I just need to find where that hybrid setting is to try it. Otherwise it needs googling more.
  3.  Colors seem very yellow (although some videos I’ve been watching in MPC-BE maybe don’t but I’m not sure?). I’ve disabled all the “protect your eyes from blue light” settings I could find and that helped quite a bit, but there’s still a definite yellow tint. I particularly notice it in Chrome. This might get solved/be able to solve if and when I can solve #2.

EDIT 1,5 hours later to add: #2 and #3 solved! All I had to do was to install newest version of AMD Adrenalin, and that solved the software + driver being unsuitable problem, and once AMD Adrenalin was working, there are settings there for screen colors which solved the yellow problem ❤️

EDIT October 3, 2024 – today single finger tapping twice and dragging to move and resize windows and scrolling the scrollbar is working and easy to make it happen! I couldn’t get it to work yesterday – not sure if it was me or the mousepad. Either way I can now do everything by the mousepad like in my old laptops even though the pressing on the lower right corner to right-click still isn’t working although I think it should be? Maybe this is actually Windows 11 feature and you’re suppose to use tapping instead?? I don’t know!

The mouse pad problem is only on the mouse pad – I tried my physical separate wireless USB mouse and it worked as it should!

I actually like quite a bit that two-finger tap opens context menu and I’m getting used to it), but it’s cumbersome having to use the keyboard to select text because using shift + arrow buttons to do it are so slooooow. So I hope I can figure this one out quickly!

But I’m very excited and quite pleased (and a little frustrated because of the 3 problems) so far. This laptop seems like mine right away!

In other news, I of course had a migraine coming in since Monday evening 🙁 and it got active going towards night yesterday. Didn’t get sleep really last night because of it, maybe 2 hours plus some resting until midday today. Now feeling better but my head is feels like it threatens to re-start, maybe.

Also, interestingly – I don’t have that as much patience and energy for computer problems solving as I used to have. I have had my previous laptop for 10 years and whatever problems that one had, I solved them 10 years ago and haven’t had real new features or new problems if drivers or anything since then. It used to be I’d be happy as a clam to spend hours/days/weeks troubleshooting some problem, but now I’m kinda wishing I could just bring over the Lenovo to someone who’d fixit for me! Unfortunately, I’m the most computer savvy person among my family and friends, so I’d have to pay for it.

I noticed this as well 3 years ago when Mom bought a new laptop and I set it up as I always do – I was happy to do it, luckily there wasn’t real problems just one or two things took time to teach Mom to do, but I noticed I didn’t feel like spending time to get real up close and personal with Windows 11  like I had with all the other operating systems I or we’d had had (Windows 95 all through to Windows 10 by then, Linux Ubuntu, Linux Mint). I myself have had Windows 10 until this Lenovo so Windows 11 was new to me and things seemed to harder to find than in previous versions. If I didn’t have to, I didn’t really want to explore it just for the hell of it. I just made everything work for Mom and her SO, and figured out and taught Mom the few things she needs to know to do herself. So I guess this is one of the downsides too of not being healthy: not having the mental wherewithal to do explore the same things as before even though I’m still interested.

But yes, I’m excited! I watched some HDR 4K h265 tv episodes and this Lenovo played them without problems! My old laptop can only play 1080p easily. I’m so happy to finally be able to play HDR 4K eps and movies 🥳

Oh, and the Lenovo was on sale – 200 euros off the regular price! So that was really good 🥳

Posted on
Apr 5, 2024

New Wallpapers – 20 Years Since LOST Premiere

After the latest upgrade, Photoshop kept throwing up an exception error 😔 It seemed to load okay, but when I tried to create a new file or open an existing image, the error notice appeared and the program shut-down itself automatically. Eventually I rolled back to the previous version and Photoshop is working again! I didn’t look further what could have caused it; my laptop still matches the required specs okay even though Photoshop doesn’t work as smoothly as it used to. At least I got a working version for now!

The other day I realized that it’s going to be 20 years in September since LOST premiered 😲 I refuse to believe it! Wasn’t it only a year ago or so?? I still love it as much as I did when it aired. Evangeline Lilly (Kate) was one of my favorite people the wallpaper in those days, so I’ve made new Evangeline wallies to commemorate the 20 years. I’ve used these photos before too, they’re from a favorite photoshoot of mine.

I really like how these turned out! I haven’t had much of a creative juice the last 12 months and a couple of times when I tried to make a new wallpaper, it felt forced and I hated everything I came up with so scrapped them. I had some problems today too working on the first one (the bottom one), but when I tried that purple/green texture it all suddenly fell into place and the other three came without problems 💖

Technology Stuff
Posted on
Mar 8, 2024

Technology Stuff

Yesterday was a hard but fun day! Mom called me around 10am that could we go buy her a new smart phone and also a new printer ASAP preferably right away? We’d been more than low key planning to buy her a new cell phone sooner than later and had been researching models for a week or so. She had a Doro 8040 (her first smart phone) that had started to drop calls in the middle of talking and turning off randomly. It had happened again in the morning and she was suddenly just completely fed up and wanted a new smart phone right now! She’d also been talking about how their printer demanded to have its print headers checked every time now that she’d use it and she was totally fed up with that too! The printer was about 8-10 years old. She was worried that now that the nurses treating her SO call her many times a week (they call her because he doesn’t hear properly), someday her phone would just give up the ghost unplanned.

So, off we went! We ended up needing to only go the department store where usually do their shopping because they had the Samsung Galaxy A54 5G in black and that was the model we had been thinking is probably the one and she was fine with the color being black. The department store also happened to have one Canon home office printer left on sale and I have a Canon home office printer which has been great and still goes on strong about 10 years later, so we picked that one up too! We had prepared we’d need to go to few different stores to get both things so Mom was really happy she got them both from their closest department store where they usually go to!

Then we spent the rest of the day setting the printer up with their laptop and making sure it worked with both her and her SO’s Windows accounts and banks, and switching from the old Doro to new Samsung Galaxy. Some phone things went automatically such as phone numbers and wifi info, but I had to install her apps manually and port all the WhatsApp content manually. She had trouble doing the fingerprint scanning yesterday, it failed many times, but today in the morning she WhatsApped me that she put both her thumb and forefingers in without any trouble today! Mom was a little hesitant yesterday, after using the Doro smart phone for years (designed for old people), how she’ll learn to use the Samsung. But she didn’t want another Doro, wanted to try another Android phone, and today she said that she hasn’t had any trouble using it today and it’s quite similar to Doro after all! We also ordered her a pretty cover for the Samsung from https://www.mobiilitukku.fi where I got my own pretty cover for my Huawei.

There are still some things left to do on the Samsung such as bring over the photos from the old phone if she wants them, but all the things she needs everyday are setup and the rest can wait until go over the next time. Samsung Galaxy A54 5G seems like a great little phone, but there is one bad thing: there is no charger! Only the USB cord that can be used to charge from the laptop – which needs to be on for the phone to charge. So we have to maybe buy a charger which is sold as an accessory, but she’s going to try her Doro’s charger first. In the meanwhile, she can only charge the phone if there’s a computer with USB-C on location and obviously she’s not going to take her laptop if they go on a say a 20-hour cruise. I think not including a charger is really bad design!

In other news, we’ve been planning that Mom will buy me a new laptop for my 50th birthday gift in November. Well, looks very much like it’ll happen much sooner – maybe ASAP! My laptop’s hard drive has started to make a whirring sound when the laptop is turned on. The hard drive is an SSD one that’s only about 3 years old, while the laptop itself is 9 years old so I’m pretty sure it’s the laptop hardware that’s failing – considering that the other hard drive bay failed a few weeks ago already – and not the SSD hard drive itself. We agreed on the price range and am now seriously looking at models and specs to choose a new laptop, with the thought to buy it ASAP and also to just jump on it if there’s a good sale or a campaign on laptops in my usual computer shops. I’ll probably make the decision within a week or two, unless this laptop goes kaput suddenly.

I’m excited that my Mom has a new smart phone and that I’m going to get a new laptop probably soon and a little worried that this old trusty laptop dies without further warning. Up until now my programs have worked great, but today Photoshop was a little less smooth than before while opening menus and such. So fingers crossed this laptop will live until the new one is here!

(If I disappear for a bit it’ll maybe be because my laptop died suddenly and waiting for the new one to arrive in the mail. I haven’t set up my smart phone with login info for here because I can’t stand to use blogs with a tiny screen, but I’ll be back as soon as I can!)

Update: Hard Drive May Be Dying
Posted on
Feb 7, 2024

Update: Hard Drive May Be Dying

Turned out it isn’t the hard drive which is dying – it’s the internal second drive bay! I switched another hard drive into the bay, and that started to have the same problems immediately and that’s how I knew plus a few times Disk Management couldn’t even see the hard drive, and sometimes when it did, it couldn’t initialize it.

Luckily I have have two hard drive bays in my laptop and the Windows OS + programs hard drive bay and hard drive itself are working normally, it’s just the other one with the additional (my main) hard drive bay that is malfunctioning. Now that I’ve removed the hard drive from that bay my laptop seems to be back to its normal self. But my laptop is 10 years old this year, and we had been planning with my Mom for her to buy me a new laptop as my 50th birthday present towards the end of the year anyway, so it’s really good that was already in the plans! And it’s really good there’s no terrible hurry *knock on wood* but it’ll behoove us to grab a new laptop sooner rather than later if there’s a nice sale suddenly or something!

I hooked up that removed main internal hard drive with all my stuff to my USB station, and run checks on it and it’s perfect, no problems or errors at all!

Now that my laptop only has the SSD hard drive which doesn’t have nearly enough space for all my stuff, I’m going to have to keep my main hard drive hooked up via USB hub until the new laptop. Which requires an external power source and a table or a stool to place it on close to my laptop and couch, and cords running around, it’s going to be more inconvenient to get to my files but I’m just glad I didn’t lose anything ✨✨

Posted on
Feb 5, 2024

Hard Drive May Be Dying

Yesterday my main hard drive started acting up, my laptop stuttering and freezing. sfc says everything’s OK but chkdsk keeps stopping with an error in Stage 3 I think it was. My laptop has two hard drives – the SSD one (which I upgraded maybe 4 years ago) with the operating system and all my programs and as far as I can tell is working great, but this other one, now troublesome, is the one with all my stuff on it and it’s old, so it may just be dying.