When we moved, we decided to get Verizon FIOS because 1. it's cheaper than Comcast and 2. it's the fastest Internet service you can get, short of having a T1 connection (like I have at work).
So, I come home last Friday night and the phone and TVs work great but the computer? Don't even go there. Everytime I try to connect to the Internet, it freezes up on me. WTF? This is what we paid for? Why didn't the installer stick around to make sure everything was working? Grrrr! This kind of shit burns me up.
I called Verizon and I wait about 25 minutes to speak with a tech. Finally, Ed comes on the line and I tell him my problem. To make a long story short, we run all kinds of diagnostics on it and it appears that it is not Verizon FIOS that's the problem but my computer. I give Ed props, though. He stayed on the line with me for about an hour and went over everything before he ruled out Verizon. Basically, he told me that my problem is "outside of the realm of Verizon."
OK. What next? I found an old business card from one of those Mom & Pop tech companies (like Geek Squad). I call 'em up and someone, Omar, comes out the next day, a Saturday. Diagnosis? Corrupted file(s) and not enough memory to run XP. (Why didn't Microsoft inform me of that when I loaded the XP?) He had my computer back to me on Sunday! I was VERY impressed. And it only cost me $210. Hey, it's cheaper than buying a new machine. That was the good news.
The bad news is that my hard drive had to be virginized. That is, EVERYTHING had to come off and be reinstalled. That means all my docs, pix, whatever. He said if he put them back on and one or more them was infected with a virus, I could have the same problem again. He did double my RAM, though, to 510, which is optimal for XP. You would not BELIEVE how fast this thing is now. BF & I always used to complain how slow it was and I was always running Spybot to remove adware, shareware, whatever. It would work for awhile and then be slow as molasses the next week.
As it turns out, I was of sound enough mind to either save my photos to disc or Snapfish so nothing of importance is gone. I had to recreate a couple of BF's business forms but that's about it. I'm sure, down the road, I'll be looking for a document and then remember, "oh yeah," but dems da breaks. I am loving the fast 'puter!
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3 comments:
Revirginizing the computer is the way to go. We did that with our old one (my hubby has a friend who's really good with stuff like this so he did it all for us!) and it works way faster than before. We gave it to my mother (who never uses it, but it's handy for us when we come over to visit and want to look something up!). I'd get FIOS but am afraid to leave Comcast because it was such a pain to get that hooked up in the first place. I'm not sure FIOS is everywhere in Bloomfield yet, will have to look into it.
Not sure either, but they advertise like crazy. So far, so good. TV comes in sharp as a tack. The only thing I can't figure out is how to adjust the picture so that the tops of people's heads aren't lopped off! I cannot for the life of me figure it out.
Hmm, maybe I'll wait till you figure that out! No heads makes for rather difficult viewing! LOL!
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