Quotation
du jour: Joseph Campbell ~ Computers are like Old Testament
gods; lots of rules and no mercy.
A month or so ago, my desktop
computer's display turned a rather nauseating shade of green. I knew
for a fact that it wasn't a problem with the monitor – i tried two
different ones. So i brought my old laptop home from work (the PC's
display was really vomitogenic) in order to remain connected.
(I only ever use the laptop at work, to listen to an Internet radio
station in the mornings [http://www.slcr.tv/]
-- the machine is old and frustratingly slow and besides it runs
Linux, an OS i've never really been comfortable with.)
Some quick research into my desktop's
problem suggested that i probably needed a new graphics card so, in
the middle of a blinding snowstorm, i set off for my favourite
computer shop (http://onsitetechnology.ca/)
only to find that they had closed early due to the weather. Terrific.
It was a few days later before i was
able to make the trek again. The young man there took one look,
moved, with some difficulty, my graphics card to a different port,
and everything seemed fine on the shop's monitor, so all was well. He
only charged me $60 for the diagnostics (didn't charge for labour)
and $20 for a DVI cable (which the new port required) and all was
well!
Until i got home, and had no display at
all! OK, i thought, i've done something really stupid here when i
plugged it all back in. But what? I quite frankly couldn't be arsed
to think too hard about it and went back to the clunky old laptop for
a few days....
Then grasped the unicorn (or was it the narwhal?) by its horn
again, the slowness of the laptop was driving me doolally, and
plugged the desktop all back in again. Still no display. What, i said
to my cat, am i doing wrong? Or is it me? Maybe the DVI cable
is wonky? Just started playing with the buttons on the front of my
monitor, just to see what would happen, et voilà! I had a
display again! Three colours, too, not just green! I wonder which
button i pushed to pull off this coup...?
I took my laptop back to work and was
able to listen to the radio again there, but at home that evening i
discovered that problems remained. Whilst waiting for a particularly
slow web page to load, i decided to pass the time with a game of
Solitaire, and received the message “hardware acceleration is not
enabled, ensure that your graphics card driver is up to date” or
something like that. I could still play Solitaire, but it was
painfully slow. (Watching the web page load was actually more
entertaining.)
Back to Google did i go and eventually,
after a misstep or two – installing a program that was supposed to
scan my computer for out-dated drivers and install them for me, for
instance, but it was useless – i went to the NVIDIA website – my
graphics card is one of theirs. I should have thought of that first,
really. They scanned my PC, found the driver i needed and i
downloaded it. Easy-peasy.
But when i tried to install it i
received the error message, “Driver could not be installed. For
help installing, visit the Windows Help And Support Center.” So i
tried, but apparently it's not one of my Windows components. Arrrgh!
I said to myself, not for the first time. A bit of further Googling
proved to be of no avail, though, so i just left it. Apart from not
being able to play Solitaire easily, some (but not all) of my music
videos (and porn videos) (oops, did i write that?) wouldn't play
properly, but otherwise, everything was okay.
Well, maybe not. A lot of my programs
started giving me “not responding” messages. Well, thanks, that
could mean anything! Nobody know da trubble i seen...
The next day, when i booted up, i saw
that the driver was trying to install itself. WTF? I said (not for
the first time). Again i went through all of that nonsense with the
Windows Help And Support Center. Bah!
The same thing happened the next day,
and the next and the next and then, toot toot “driver succesfully
installed”! Yay, i was able to play Solitaire again! But, but, i
was still having too many “not responding” messages. I tried
everything i could think of – AV and anti-malware scans, i
defragged, ran a registry cleaner, cleared my cache, emptied my
Recycle Bin, stroked the cat, had a beer (well, several actually),
watched an episode of “The Big Bang Theory,” went to The Beer
Store (because i ran out).... Nothing made any difference.
Then i ran Windows Update. (It was
Patch Tuesday.) All now seems to be well, although i can't think what
difference that would have made....
I have no idea what happened. I'd love
to be able to say that i'm a tech whiz and solved the problem myself,
but nothing i did was of any avail. It sorted itself!
Here's my playlist:
Runrig -- The Story
Big Wreck -- The Pleasure And the Greed
The Jeff Beck Group -- Rough And Ready
Pyewackett -- The Man In The Moon
Drinks Claret
Jeff Beck -- Official Bootleg U.S.A.
Loggins & Messina -- On Stage
Various Artists -- Rattlesnake Guitar:
The Music Of Peter Green
Sharon Shannon -- Out The Gap
Rita Coolidge -- The Best Of Rita
Coolidge
Stephen Stills -- Stephen Stills 2
Paul Simon -- The Rhythm Of The Saints
Pete Townshend -- Psychoderelict
The Beatles -- Revolver
The Motors -- Airport
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