I spent most of the afternoon at home trying to get my wireless internet connection to, for lack of a better word, connect. Since I moved, I have had intermittent connection issues. I'd lose connectivity, then regain it. This happened numerous times a day and often at the most inopportune times; while uploading my work websites or worse yet, when talking to the ones I love on messenger.
Last night, after numerous attempts to upload a rather large website update, I called my internet provider's tech support for assistance. He had me restart the cable modem and wireless router, all things I had done numerous times on my own but was more than willing to try again just in case doing so under his tutelage would somehow correct whatever problem there was in my system. Unfortunately, it didn't and he scheduled a service call for today.
Harry, the very kind and knowledgeable service rep, was a bit late to arrive and while I was waiting, my cable TV quit working. I hoped that the TV would remain on the fritz until Harry arrived, so that he might have a better chance diagnosing the problem, but it did not and by the time he arrived I had both cable TV and cable internet.
As he walked through the door, he asked if I had lost service completely for a few minutes. I responded that I had lost cable TV for a little while, but still had internet. The look on his face was priceless. Apparently Harry had replaced the main line to my apartment, hoping that it would fix my connectivity problem. Since both cable TV and cable internet come from the same line, I should have lost both during the replacement.
We finally figured out that I had been "borrowing" internet from someone in the area and had never actually been connected to my own router. Aha, we thought, that should solve the problem. We hooked to the router through a hard line and went through all the steps necessary to set up a network, but no matter what we did, it still wouldn't connect to my own router.
Harry called his tech support person who told him it must be a router problem. He told me to contact my router's tech support, which I did through live chat. The first tech (yes this is a long story, so smoke 'em if you got 'em), had me go into dos, change some settings, stand on one foot and wave a magic wand. Finally, after about 2 hours and several dark moments, I was connected to my own router!
Yippee! I was home free.
Or not.
After about an hour I got the horrifying "blue screen of death". After watching my system crash and restarting the computer, I connected again.
As you can see, Emily was VERY concerned about my computer problems...Now, about 3 hours later, I have still not had another b-l-u-e s-c-r-e-e-n o-f d-e-a-t-h (yes, I'm spelling it in hopes that the computer does NOT recognize what I'm saying and reward me with yet another) and it seems that it may actually be working.
Another strange thing that has happened since I moved in to my own place is that my TV has decided it needs to display close captioning. I have tried everything to remove it, to no avail.
I was chatting with some friends tonight on yahoo and they had several suggestions. They told me to go into the menu, which I did. I started clicking on things and ended up with the entire menu in Spanish.
Since I have no grasp of that language and frankly a very limited grasp of English, I was at a loss as to how to change it back to English. I kept fiddling with things as my cyber friends urged me on and I ended up with what I can only imagine was the Arabic language on my menu.
Since I couldn't figure out how to turn off close captioning in English, I was pretty sure I wasn't going to be able to change it in either Spanish or Arabic. I was about to give up when I noticed a button on the remote that said CC. I pushed it and viola, close captioning disappeared. Who'd have thunkit? CC stands for close captioning.
Hmmm, I never made the connection.
I think I'll join my kitty in bed now. I've had enough fun for the day...
Sigh...is it Friday yet?
19 comments:
Glad you have it working now...that saga could apply to lots of us folks setting up wireless networks I think. I do most stuff on the computer with ease, but I had to have one of the kids help me set up ours...tricky stuff!
For a second there I thought I may have been in the twilight zone reading a nicer version of the bitch fest I had over the weekend when my husband and I decided to move our computer from the guest room into our room. Our tv went blank and we couldn't get an internet connection until we figured out that we put the cable into a dead outlet...it took us 2 hours of rebooting and readjusting and even reprogramming the remote to figure out to just connect to the correct outlet which just so happened to be located.....right next to the dead one. Fun.
And that is what I call a brain fart.
Glad all is well now.
At least you didn't have to start your computer all over from scratch. I spent several hours fixing my mom's computer last year and ended up losing everything. And then it happened again. And I mean everything.
It could always be worse!
threecollie, yeah, seems to be fine now. It really was kind of an adventure!
mspea, we did that at work once. Spent most of a day working with tech support to get the new computer up and running only to find the network outlet was dysfunctional. ha! Our tax dollars at work!
Butterfly, you are so so right! It could have been awful! I have a lot of data on this computer because I use it for work. Fortunately I back it up to CD's fairly often and have all my photos saved to disc. I am very lucky I didn't have the problems you and your mom had! I hope your mom's computer is working well again.
Hugs to all!!
Laurie, you brought back the worst memories for me. I've been through the same fiascos, more than a few, in the past 12 months. The longest phone call I had was with Dell that lasted nearly 4 hours.
Glad you are up and running! Whew. What a relief.
That's really frustrating. Let's hope there's no more that bsod.
Not Friday yet.
But it is Mercury Retrograde
Communication cock ups are just par for the course...
My advice would be to take the green knob on the
;-)
We just had to reset our computer back to factory defaults (effing Vista), which was so not fun. This was the day after we figured out what was wrong with our router and fixed it. If it's not one thing, it's another. At least I backed up most of the important stuff to an external hard drive. That hard drive is my best friend. :)
Thats such a cute pic of emmy next to the computer and in bed. I am glad you finaly got that fixed, I remember how anoying it was while I was there.
I have had many days like these. Makes me especially thankful for my 14 yr old son who can now take care of these things in minutes rather than hours on the phone with support. It also reminds me of when I called the electrician to fix the broken fixture, after determining it was a burnt out lightbulb and for once not my bad wiring. Thankfully he didn't charge me. He was happy to have a story to tell his coworkers...
The next time you have computer problems, just ask Emily to make the repairs. Alex repairs mine all of the time. Of course, he also is the cause of about 90% of the problems. (I really never should have allowed the cat to have his own blog).
Silly humans.
Isn't it great. All this technology has produced so much more... leisure time.
Hooray it's Friday! Glad to see that I'm not the only one.
just remember, computers are to annoy and make life generally irritating.
the cat seems to have it right!
Laurie--I am laughing and crying with you.
When friends of ours had trouble with their wireless connection, turned out their router was fried. Who knew?
Oh, gotta love those kitties--they know how to handle stress.
Computer problems are so frustrating. It's even worse when trying to work from home. Glad you've got things working again. :-)
Glad you got everything sorted. You have more patience than I.
You are lucky you got rid of the Arabic. . . . .your next visit might have been from Homeland Security, LOL.
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