Vista Box Update

I told you about the Vista box blowing-up... well, I shouldn't say "blowing-up," because that's stretching things and, with my penchant for bad luck, God may think to show me what it would look like if it really blew-up. Okay, so it didn't blow-up, per se, but it did blow-out when, during a particularly bad storm, a tree fell on an electrical line outside, knocking-out the power for miles around (for two days, no less)! ANYwho, the modem was fried, and when I turned the computer on, the fan ran fine but it wouldn't boot and the lights around the power button didn't shine.

I've been in hobby computing for over 15 years now, but the truth is I was much better at these things when I was younger - I was more interested in it then; now, I just find the whole thing a hassle. That's why I didn't think to remove the modem and give it a shot until recently. That worked (it almost always does, given the symptoms described above) and now I've got the box back up and running.

Unfortunately, I still do not have broadband, nor do I have any Vista drivers for all of the many, many modems I have. Worse yet, this old 98 box doesn't have a CD-burner! So, I can probably find a Vista driver for the modem, but I have no way of getting it onto the box without installing a CD-writable in this computer...

I'll likely just buy a new computer, but will have to wait until next week. Then it will take another week to arrive, so...

I'm still rolling-out the Halloween material, but I obviously have a lot going on here. I'm going to walk you through the steps I take, getting these computers in order. While most every instance is unique in some regards, I'm often surprised to learn that others have suffered the same computing trials as I, so maybe this information will help someone.

© C Harris Lynn, 2009