KirstenL4W

In the interest of just getting a post out there yesterday while in the midst of computer hell, I didn’t quite explain what the problem was.  So here’s an explanation:

I usually use the laptop in the living room, connecting to our home network via a wireless connection.  The laptop has Vista, btw, which is of an important note because it is the only one of our 4 computers running Vista.  The others are XP.  Anyhoo, all indications were that I had a very strong internet connection, and I was even able to get the weather widget to work, but trying to actually access the internet using Firefox or IE was an effort in futility.  If I was lucky enough to get a website, it was after a long wait and there was no guarantee that graphics would be included.  Again, just as a reminder, the laptop was the only computer afflicted with this strange illness.

The computer had been sitting idle since Sunday evening, so it had been close to 48 hours that it was powered down.  There was plenty of battery life left, and everything else appeared to be working normally.  Vista even thought my connection was fine; the diagnostic check recommended that I contact my ISP.  Since Boyfriend was online playing his Silly Little Game, I knew that the problem was not with my ISP, it was in the laptop, somehow.

At Boyfriend’s suggestion, I installed some new anti-virus software. (Side note: I have run a computer for many years without any such software; when I finally did install some it only found some tracking cookies.  In all my years of computing I have never had a virus.)  After the hour or so of updating Vista, uninstalling the Norton that came with the laptop, installing TrendMicro, and doing a scan, only a few tracking cookies were found.  Performance was not improved.  Some more diagnostics ended up resetting the internal wireless adapter, which solved the problem … for about 5 minutes.

Boyfriend did a hard restart, which helped a little, but it was still very slow (not super slow, as it had been), and I was still getting some sites without graphics.  I had already given up by this point and was all by my lonesome in the bedroom on my desktop.  I did start the disk defrag, but as of 5:30am it was still running, so with the screen saver and power saver settings, I don’t know if it stops running when it goes into power save mode.  There’s no way to visually check the progress of the defrag on Vista, either.  However, the internet issues were pretty much gone this morning, since I was able to check my email just fine.  This is so perplexing.

Boyfriend mentioned yesterday that his satellite radio was not able to access a signal.  Since it’s in the truck and there aren’t that many natural barriers to the signal here in Las Vegas, I’m wondering if these events are related.  The Pentagon seems intent on shooting down a wayward satellite, and with a 10 second window to push the button to send a heat-seeking missile to an object that is not outputting any heat, along with the coincidental news coming out of Cuba this week, I’m wondering if the electronic issues of late are a signal that the end of the world is coming.  But don’t listen to me.  I’m not a conspiracy theorist or anything.

At least my iPod still works normally.  I don’t know where I’d be without that.

Other Posts Like Me:

• #*%&^% Computers
• It Doesn’t Make Sense
• The Case of the Disappearing Bookmarks
• What’s in this box?
• Internet Withdrawal