Tag: windows installation

New DVD Burner

On By Michel McDonaldIn Computer, TechLeave a comment

Well I finally did it. I finally bought a new DVD burner. I don’t know what happened to mine but it won’t even read discs let alone burn them anymore.

The DVD burner that I have is a Lite-on lightscribe DVD burner that I bought in January 2007. After only a couple of years it decided that it wasn’t going to open easily anymore. When you press the button it makes these clicking sounds but doesn’t open. You had to keep pressing the button until it would open.

Eventually it got so bad that you’d have to put a paperclip into the little hole that allows you to force the door to open. Now, that doesn’t even open it anymore.

I don’t care about burning music or whatever, I just want to back up my files so that I can reformat my hard drive. My computer is so slow because of all the crap that I download. I’ve deleted more than half of what I’ve downloaded only because I knew I wouldn’t be able to back it up but that doesn’t help me if I can’t burn the rest of the stuff onto discs.

My DVD burner that is in there now was $50 at TigerDirect.com back in 2007 and I checked the computer store in town and they sell the same one for $46 and I went to TigerDirect.com again and they sell the same one for $19.99 now. I thought, I’d much rather spend $25 (with shipping) and wait until the end of the week for it rather than spend double and get it today.

So hopefully by the weekend my computer won’t be so slow. I can finally burn the crap I’ve been downloading as well as all of my documents and images and start fresh with a new Windows installation.

About friggin time!

Poor Lonely Laptop

On By Michel McDonaldIn Daily BlogLeave a comment

In 2004 I got a Dell Inspiron 1100 laptop.  It has served me very well over the years and this year it was time to renew my warranty but I didn’t have the money and because it’s fairly old I just decided that it wasn’t worth it to keep paying to renew it.  Instead I could just let it lapse and if something goes wrong with it then I guess I will have to start saving money to get a new one. In the meantime it’s been turned off and sitting on my desk with the lid closed for the last 6 months.

I think that it’s time to turn it on and start transferring all the documents, pictures, music, videos etc over to the desktop just in case it does crash.  Once that’s finished then I’m going to reformat it so it’s got a nice fresh Windows installation so it’s fast again.  Maybe if it’s fast then I might use it again.  That’s one of the reasons it’s been closed all this time because I turn it on and it takes about 20 minutes before I can even go to a website.  It’s so frustrating to have to wait that long.

One of the main uses for the laptop these days is for when we travel because I have the Microsoft Streets & Trips with USB GPS.  I would much rather have a TomTom or a Garmin GPS though because it’s too hot to have a laptop on my lap during a 6 hour trip lol.

This is going to take awhile lol.

By the way, when I say it’s on my lap for 6 hours I mean as the passenger lol.  I don’t drive…