Computer Frustration

Computers drive me MAD!!!

Thursday evening I stopped by Sam’s Club and got my power strip with a surge protector and back up battery. It looked to be a pretty straightforward installation. The dusty wires behind the computer armoire are always a nightmare to deal with. Got everything all hooked up and things seemed to be working fine. Then I went to arrange the tangled mess and accidently hit the power button. This terrible beeping emitted from the power strip signaling a low battery. The green power light would not come back on.

I had to re hook up my old power strip and try and figure out what I did to mess up the new power strip. I disconnected and reconnected the battery, plugged it back in the wall and it powered up with the green light: just like it was supposed to do. I figured I’d let it run overnight to charge that battery, and try to reconnect it all in the morning.

Friday morning all got changed over to the new power strip with no problem at all. I was feeling pretty confident at this point…..

I wanted to scan a photo of Daggy and Stumpy taken back when they were just barely a year old in the spring of 1999. My Brother laser printer is a combination scanner. This would be the first time I tried a scan since getting the new computer tower. I was so surprised that the Windows 7 program did not read the scanner. (That statement was meant to be irony.) I figured it worked as my default printer; it would also work as my scanner.

I tried to reinstall the program using the set-up disc. I save all those things. It would not work for Windows 7. Windows XP was the last system my printer program disc was compatible with.

I could not get my computer to recognize the scanner. I thought I found the right downloads from the Brother’s site. A help thread suggested installing a program to uninstall the driver and then reinstall the program from a download from the Brothers site.

After messing around with that I was able to get the scanner to work. But… then I lost my printer! OMG! I downloaded another install program to temporary files which would install a printer driver or whatever it needed. The computer god’s smiled on me and it worked. I don’t think I was never as happy as when the trial page printed up!

Then I had to go back and delete all the install files. They have a way of piling up and hogging lots of space on the hard drive. I also deleted the Brother files from the folder of my old hard drive programs.

There is such a love/hate relationship between me and my Dell. If Louis or Scott were here they could have fixed the problem in their sleep. It gives me a real sense of accomplishment whenever I can figure out and fix a computer mess.

Anyway, here is the picture that caused the entire trauma. This was taken in the early spring of 1999. I was just getting my backyard in shape. Stump looks more like a bear cub with his “stump tail” as he goes to pounce on Dagney.