Tag: Windows 8.1

Warming up to Windows 10

On By Michel McDonaldIn App, ComputerLeave a comment

Windows 10 logoI wasn’t happy with Windows 10 when I installed it because it took hours to install, then everything took forever to load. I couldn’t get the Start window to come up, and when it finally did come up, it would go away because I was clicking the Start button too many times in frustration. I also hated the new Start window because when I would try to move things around, the icons would disappear, and then there would be huge gaps with no icons, so I took out ALL icons and just added them again in the order I wanted to see them, like this…

win10startThe first couple of days using Windows 10 was a learning experience, and things have gotten a lot faster since I started. The Start window comes up immediately now and when I click All apps, the list of apps comes up right away, although, there are times when it takes a few seconds longer, but I’m patient.

Now the only thing that still concerns me is Microsoft Money. Someone tweeted me a link to a blog that tells me that all I have to do is go into my Registry and change something, which isn’t always the best idea, especially coming from a stranger. Oh sure stranger, I’ll screw things up even more, thank you. And the sad thing is I went into my registry and looked for that string, but it wasn’t there. I’m actually glad I didn’t find it because it would’ve been a disaster if I screwed things up and had to start over again. I hope Microsoft comes up with an update to fix this issue so I can use MS Money again.

This is the error message I am getting when I load MS Money.

money needs ie6When I started using Windows 8.1, I wasn’t using the browser to use Facebook, Facebook Pages Manager or Twitter, I was using the Windows apps instead. Gradually those apps stopped loading quickly until they just stopped loading at all. Eventually I had to go back to using the browser.

When I installed Windows 10, those apps load quickly, and in a small window. In fact, all of the apps, including Windows Edge, their new browser, all open in a small square window. I have a widescreen monitor, not a square one, not that Windows really cares. But still, when I use Edge, I have to stretch it on both sides to see everything on the website. When I close the website and Edge reloads when I click a link, it opens in that square box again. Not that that is a real issue for me, I don’t really care about that. I’m not bitching about anything, I’m just saying this is what’s happening when I open Edge.

I had mixed feelings before installing, and I was outraged after I installed, but I’m warming up to the new version of Windows and believe it or not, I’m happy I installed it.

For anyone who just installed Windows 10 without burning it on a DVD, you should probably think about downloading the ISO file for both 32bit and 64bit and burning them to a DVD or putting it on a USB drive. They give you both options. You’ll regret not doing so if/when the day comes when you have to reformat or even if you buy a new hard drive and you have to reinstall Windows 8.1 and then upgrade back to Windows 10. After a year, you won’t have the option to upgrade to Windows 10 for free. It’s just a suggestion, and trust me, you will thank me later.

Windows 10 for FREE

On By Michel McDonaldIn Daily BlogLeave a comment

windows-10-phone-features-970-80

It took me 15 years to decide to upgrade from Windows XP, and I only made the decision because I was forced by Microsoft to buy the latest operating system, or allow my computer to be infected with thousands of parasitic viruses that would probably eat away at every microscopic section of my motherboard and all my other hardware which would then force me to have to buy a new computer. I decided I was due for a new operating system anyway, so I figured what the hell, I’ll buy Windows 8.1 full install. I didn’t buy the upgrade because I didn’t want to have to install Windows XP then upgrade to 8.1 every time I reformatted or had to buy a new hard drive.  I figure if I’m going to install an operating system, I’d rather install the one I’m going to use immediately and for a long time instead of having to go through 2 installations, which could take an hour each.

The start window for 8.1 looks awesome to me. Everyone said I would hate it, because they assumed I refused to upgrade because I hated the 8.1 start window, but that simply isn’t true. I’m cheap as hell. No seriously, I’m living on a low income disabled budget, which has absolutely no budget for a new $100 operating system. It just so happened that I had a bulk sale for tassels, and that was what helped me buy Windows. See, that’s why I have a Etsy shop. If I need to buy something, I can count on people to buy keychains or earrings if I beg them to lol. My sales are usually nothing every month, so those occasional sales are awesome.

The Start window for Windows 10 looks a lot smaller, to say the least lol. I quite enjoy the 8.1 Start window because when I’m watching TV, it is a dark enough screen that it doesn’t bother me when I’m watching my shows. If the screen is bright from Facebook or if I have a bright desktop image, then it hurts my eyes to look at the TV and have the bright computer screen in the corner of my eye. I hope they have given us an option to choose this smaller window, or a full screen start window. If the image above is our only option, well, then I guess I’ll have to just deal with it.

As with all new operating systems you want to give it a few months before installing just because you may have to live without your printer or your webcam or any other external hardware you might have if they were sitting on their thumbs when they should’ve been making new drivers. There is also a chance that your favorite MMORPG isn’t compatible. You might have to miss raiding for quite a while. Of course I would find out if they have support for Windows 10 before installing it because they may have a version specifically for Windows 10 all ready to go.

I love new things only because I get bored easily, but I’m quite content with what I have for now. I say I will wait to make sure everything works, but I’m sure there won’t be too many issues. I have a Microsoft webcam and a Kodak Printer, which I’m sure will be ready long before Windows 10 is downloaded. I’m sure my keyboard and mouse work since I trust Logitec will have it ready to go. I don’t usually have to worry since they are plug and play.

So if you are one of those people who panic at the thought of something new, take a chill pill and give it time, but don’t miss out on reserving your FREE copy of Windows 10. They are giving you something for free, so take advantage of it while you can. You don’t have to install it immediately, I’m sure you can burn the installation files onto a cd or dvd and install it when you are ready. If you have panic attacks at the thought of issues, then just check to see how other people are dealing with them before you take the leap.

I actually look forward to the new Windows 10 that I just may buy a bigger hard drive and start over from scratch so I have a FAST new experience. We will see in another 7 weeks.

Oh boy, my hard drive crashed

On By Michel McDonaldIn ComputerLeave a comment

hard drive crashed

Well this is unexpected, then again when is a crashed hard drive expected?

I have, or well I had a 320GB hard drive that once upon a time was my actual computers hard drive.  When I upgraded my computer a few years ago, my hard drive would not boot into Windows so I had to buy a new hard drive. My 320GB hard drive was installed as a slave drive on the same IDE ribbon and I was able to use it to hold all of my data. I only had 1 IDE ribbon. I could have bought a second one, but I never did. Oh well.

When I recently upgraded my operating system to Windows 8, it wouldn’t install because of that hard drive. After finally figuring out that that was what was causing my installation problems, I unplugged the drive, but once I had Windows 8 installed, I plugged it back in and Windows loaded fine. It loaded slow, but at least it loaded. I managed to copy all of my most important files, and some not so important, but there were still some very important files that I did not copy. Copying was tedious and was taking hours, so I just figured I would give myself and that hard drive a break by not copying the rest. I never imagined the drive would fail.

I have 2 external drive cases, but I didn’t think either of them worked. Since I had to remove the drive, I figured I would give the external cases a try. First I used the bigger external case, which I knew had problems loading hard drives. I forgot that I had a smaller external case. I found it and plugged the hard drive into it and it still did not load. The computer recognizes that something was plugged into the USB drive because it makes a sound when I turn the drive on and off, but it doesn’t show me anything. I plugged it into my Chromebook and it recognizes that something is plugged in, but nothing happens. Just out of curiosity, I put another hard drive into the external case and it immediately showed me all of the files on the Chromebook. That is actually what confirmed that my hard drive crashed and it wasn’t just the external case that was malfunctioning.

I’m not too broken up over this crashed hard drive, but I am thankful that I managed to copy 75% of it to my new hard drive before it crashed. I did lose a lot of files, but luckily I backed about 80% of those pictures onto social media websites like Facebook and Google+.

So now my task is to download all of those pictures, and upload them to the Microsoft Sky Drive. I can add pictures to Facebook and Twitter from the Sky Drive, so that’s what I will do.

What sucks is that there were a lot of files that I did not back up onto the internet, but what good are they anyway? Who cares, right? It’s just a picture, it’s just data. What good is data anyway? I mean, it’s not like it is a part of me, it’s stuff. Stuff can be replaced by more stuff, but what good is stuff in the grand scheme of things? It doesn’t matter because I have lived my entire life without it, so why should it matter if I still have it? There are pictures of me as a child that I will never see because they are being held hostage by people who are mad at me, but I manage to live my life without seeing them. I am perfectly okay with this loss because it doesn’t matter to me. Life is too short to hang on to things that don’t matter, so life goes on and I will be just fine. It is time to start making new memories, so off to the future I go.

Windows 8.1 Installed

On By Michel McDonaldIn Daily BlogLeave a comment

Windows 8.1

My new Windows 8.1 Full Installation DVD’s came yesterday via UPS. I didn’t exactly have the easiest time installing it, and it literally took me 4 or more hours to figure out why. It turns out Windows 8.1 hates my storage hard drive, so the only way for me to install it is to unplug it. I’m sure that now that Windows is installed, I shouldn’t have any issues plugging it back in, but just in case, I will use a second IDE cable to plug it into the IDE 2 slot in my motherboard instead of using the same cable.

This is the error message I kept getting.

windows 8 install problems

But… here’s the thing, I was able to install the 64bit version of Windows 8.1 on the first try, but when it finished installing, it gave me an orange screen with thin white lines and a blinking underscore in the top left of the screen. I Googled that and found that it was a hardware error, but I figured it was because I didn’t have enough ram. I have 4GB of ram, but I figured maybe I needed to install the 32bit version, so I did and that was the first time I got the error message in the image above.

I asked on Facebook and a friend named James Benstine helped walk me through it on my Nook HD+ with Facebook messaging. I took several pictures with my phone so he could see what I was seeing. That is a huge help for anyone who is trying to help someone. I know I’ve tried helping people and they don’t think to take a picture with their phone to let me know what they are seeing, which makes it difficult to help, especially if they don’t give you details of what they are seeing. I took pictures of the BIOS menus every time he asked me to show it to him.

storage configuration bios menuI kept telling James that my hard drive was SATA and he couldn’t figure out why it kept showing up as IDE in my BIOS menu. I knew I had a SATA drive, but I forgot that it was my DVD burner that was the SATA drive. I mean duh, it says it right there in the BIOS menu as clear as day.

So I wrote myself a note and put it in the Windows 8.1 box that tells me to unplug the storage drive before installing Windows. I know that I will eventually have to reinstall Windows, I’ve had to reinstall XP more than a dozen times over the years.

The reason there is an issue with that storage hard drive is because when I built this computer, I tried using that hard drive, but it wouldn’t run Windows XP, it wouldn’t even turn the screen on. I had to buy a new hard drive and install Windows XP onto it to be able to use my computer again. I knew that I couldn’t load an operating system onto it which is why it is a slave drive and not a master drive. I didn’t have any issue installing XP on the master drive, so I don’t know why I had an issue installing 8.1 with it installed as a slave.

My next question will be this, will it cause an issue loading Windows 8.1 when I plug it back in? Tune in to find out. Same bat time, same bat channel.

Update: I bought a can of compressed air from Walgreen’s and managed to blow out all the dust from my tower, including all the dust in the heat sink and the fans in the back, as well as the dust at the bottom and laying on top of the video card. There was dust EVERYWHERE! I was still sneezing hours later. Should’ve wore a mask first. Lesson learned!

It took a little longer to load Windows, but it did eventually load. It has taken me most of the day copying and pasting my files from the storage drive. I decided that I should probably check for redundancy and unwanted files, so I was deleting unwanted and unneeded files, copying the wanted files and then deleting them from the storage drive. Once I have everything that I want on the drive that runs my operating system, then I will format the storage drive.

It would be nice to have a storage drive to keep all my files on, but if it’s just going to slow things down then it just isn’t worth it. I will see if it still slows my computer down after I format it. If it doesn’t slow it down then I will keep it, if it does then I will have no choice but to unplug and remove it. I could always install it onto a external hard drive case and plug it in with the USB cable and just plug it in as needed.

Oh would you look at the time, it’s 2 a.m. I will finish my copies tomorrow.

Reformat Fun Time

On By Michel McDonaldIn Daily BlogLeave a comment

I just love to reformat my hard drive and start over from scratch.  Okay so that’s a lie, but it is nice to start fresh every now and then when my computer becomes so slow and even using crap cleaner and defragmenting doesn’t help.

The first thing you want to do before reformatting your hard drive is to back up all of your files either onto DVD’s, any cloud service or a back up hard drive.  I chose to use a back up hard drive because I don’t really feel like having to copy all of the files from DVDs or having to download all of my files again.  I won’t have to do anything with a back up hard drive, I’d just leave all the files there because they are easily accessible if I need them.  I’ve already done that, although I had a little issue when moving files around that resulted in panic and using Recuva.  See my last post.

The second step is to reformat my hard drive, but making sure I pick the correct hard drive, you know, the one that has my current operating system, not the back up hard drive, because talk about a nightmare.  UGH!

The UPS tracking says it will arrive tomorrow between 10:45 a.m. and 2:45 p.m. which means I can start reformatting either tonight before I go to bed, or when I wake up early in the morning.  I like to be prepared so I can just pop the DVD in the drive and get the show on the road, because the sooner I install the new operating system, the sooner I can get back to doing the thing I love to do, which is check Facebook and Twitter, despite the fact that I can do that on my Chromebook, Nook HD+ and my phone.  Could someone remind me why I even still use a computer? :p

I’m just kidding, of course I have a computer so I can play EverQuest, blog, money management, print packing slips and labels for my Etsy shop among many other things.  It’s not just about Facebook, although that’s mostly what I use it for.

I was hesitant to get Windows 8.1, but now I’m kind of excited to start over with a new operating system.  This should be fun.

Recuva from @Piriform

On By Michel McDonaldIn Computer, Daily Blog1 Comment

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I’ve been making backups of my documents from my hard drive to my backup hard drive because I am getting ready to reformat my hard drive to install Windows 8.1. Instead of copying all my files, I moved them so that they were no longer on my hard drive, well, I learned the hard way that that was a huge mistake.

On the backup hard drive, in order for me to get to the My Documents folder, I had to go through several other folders, so I wanted to make it so when I went into the D drive, I would immediately see the My Documents folder. You see, my backup hard drive used to be my main drive, so it still has the Windows installation on it, so I had to go through documents and settings. Anyway, I tried moving the My Documents folder and an error occurred with moving one file and the moving stopped which for some reason deleted everything in the My Documents folder from My Pictures down. Ouch!

So I went into full panic mode. I googled on my Nook how to recover deleted files because I couldn’t access my D drive recycle bin. I found Recuva from Piriform. I am familiar with their program called Ccleaner because I’ve been using that since 2002 or 2003. I did a deep scan which said would take 4 days, and it scanned all night and most of the next day. I was chatting with someone on my Chromebook and accidentally used my desktop computer’s keyboard which canceled my scan, but it still showed me all the files it found to recover. It took 13 hours to recover all but about 5591 or so files.

Recovering all of my files is a huge weight of my shoulders. Now I can continue where I left off so I can reformat my hard drive so when Windows 8.1 comes, all I have to do is install it.

I have Recuva in my list of programs to install with the new operating system so I will be prepared for future disaster, if that ever happens again. Also in my list are Ccleaner and Defraggler. I highly recommend these programs to anyone who needs them.