Computer Pains

It has been over two weeks since my last posting. I have a pretty good excuse that I think most of you will understand. I am a computer professional and I use my computer all day, every day. Early last week my main workstation froze a couple of times. This was highly unsual as my computer is usually reliable. Then later in the week it locked up a few more times and eventually did a spontaneous rebooot. Then I know I had a big problem. By Friday afternoon, my computer would only run for 5-10 minutes at a time before it would lock up.

I have quite a bit of experience at repairing computers, hardware and software. On Saturday, I went through a series of trouble shooting steps and determined that the problem was with the hardware and most likely in the voltage regulator for the cpu on the motherboard. By then my computer would boot, but only run for a few seconds.

Rather than trying to fix this old computer, I got a new one. The new computer is running a 64-bit version of Windows Vista. Fortunately, I was able to restore all of my files from backups. I have been back up and running since Sunday night, but Vista is a new experience for me. I think I like Vista, but I it is taking me twice as long to do everything. Not because Vista is slow, but because I am spending a lot of time hunting for things that have moved, changed names, or otherwise hid themselves from my immediate reach.

I don't change computers very often. I consider it about as much fun as moving to a different house or office. I know that the end result may be better, but I would rather not go through the process. When my computer started showing signs of trouble, the one thing I didn't have to worry about is losing data. My data is safely and securely backed up using an online backup system. The pain of moving to the new computer was significant, and continues to slow me down. I am almost back to 100% now. If I had lost my data, the pain would linger for many months.