I had a much interrupted night, so I asked the girls to feed the outside cats. I’m supposed to be trying to get sleep right now, but the interruptions continue!
While a daughter was outside, feeding cats, I checked the weather. Good grief!
Twenty below zero, with a windchill of -27C!!!
And my daughter hadn’t bothered to put on a coat!
She informed me that she was able to pet the super fluffy little tabby.
Today, our high is supposed to be -10C. Tomorrow, we’re supposed to reach 5C!
The critters outside must be so confused.
Speaking of critters, the raccoons are showing up in the sun room at night, more often. I chased at least 4 out last night!
Anyhow.
I don’t think I’ll be getting that sleep I need. The interruptions just aren’t slowing down! I’m going to be a useless wreck, today. 🙁
Okay, so I last wrote about the issues I was having with my Windows Explorer. It just kept crashing on me, constantly.
I downloaded and tested two different file manager apps. They both worked perfectly. I had no problem navigating through my system. Even going into the external hard drive was without issue.
The new one. The old one is not even detected right now. I think my old computer corrupted something on it.
I took a break from beating my head against my keyboard, slithered my way in between the cats on my bed and took a nap.
I woke to find a useful comment from Silk (thank you!) suggesting I go to the Windows 11 website. One of those obvious things I probably should have already tried, but I really haven’t had this computer for long.
It turns out that “Windows 11 explorer crashing” is a common enough search term, it was the first term suggested when I started typing it into DuckDuckGo. One of the top results was this link here.
There were a few step by step fixes on the page, and I tried the first one.
Could it really be that easy???
Basically, it was Control Panel>File Explorer Options, select the General tab, open the Open File Explorer drop down menu, and select “this PC”. That’s it.
The screen cap in the instructions showed only “quick access” and “this PC” as options, but mine had a third. When doing the initial set up, after reinstalling Windows, it apparently named my PC with my initials, and that’s what it was set to.
After setting it to “this PC”, I opened explorer and tested it out.
It’s working perfectly.
Not only was I able to navigate through my PC and the external hard drive with zero issues, I found the February sub folder I’d started to upload pictures from my camera into. I’d been able to dump the photos into the folder, but was never able to organize them the way I usually do. I was able to create a series of sub folders and sort all the photos in there, without any issues at all.
One of the strange things we have cats doing, is bringing objects from the basement up and using them as toys. Things like roofing nails (there’s a bucket of those down there), various types of electrical connectors, bolts, etc. Tissue used to bring up bullets. We never found where she was getting them, but she must have got them all, because that finally stopped.
We’ve seen several of the kittens come up from the basement and dropping things on the dining room floor. Even the Tiny Beast!
Of course, we take the stuff away as soon as we spot them. There’s a container in one of our shelves that has quite a collection, now.
With PBC in the house now, and not isolated in one room, we have the basement door closed until she and the other ladies heal up. Bonus: mo more weird metal things on the floor!
Some are not happy with that.
Yesterday, Ghosty found the container in the shelf and began violently digging into it, to reach the objects on the bottom. She had stuff flying all over the place before I could get to her and stop her. Of course, I picked up the objects she flung all around. Our lino has a very busy pattern, though. I knew it was possible I missed something. I made sure to let the family know. Especially my husband, who is almost always barefoot.
Well, I missed something.
I got up to feed the cats this morning, not bothering to put on my inside shoes.
This is what I ended up pulling out of my foot.
Good grief.
Thankfully, my feet are rather calloused, so it didn’t do much damage. Still, I got the girls to feed the outside cats while I cleaned the wound.
I am now writing my first blog post on my new computer!
It WORKED!!!
It took a day and a half, and five tries at reinstalling Windows. My husband ended up creating a new recovery drive on another USB thumb drive before it finally worked.
It took a while to get that initial set up, of course, but it went through the whole thing.
Also, Windows 11 really, really wanted me to give it access to all sorts of things, then tried to sell me stuff. Granted, giving them access to things might make doing some stuff more convenient, but I’m not about to allow them access to my personal data for that.
I now have to go through what will be a long and tedious process to set everything back up again. Windows, of course, wants to us Edge as the default browser – it doesn’t come with any other – but in the data the computer repair guy saved for me on the external hard drive had a couple of browser files in my downloads. I installed that, but Firefox was not my default browser. I ended up going back to Chrome, which is where all my bookmarks are, but apparently, I don’t have the download to reinstall it anymore.
It’s going to take me weeks to get everything installed and back where I want them.
Meanwhile, the entire layout and appearance of the computer is different. Even the task bar is different.
I am not going to work on that tonight, though. I need a break.
My alarm just went off. I need to find and bring that fluffy tortie in for the night. Then I’m going to install @$%&*@#$ Alien Crossfire and de-stress with some mindless gaming.
I’ll work on it tomorrow, after I bring the cats home from the vet.
We have had repeatedly failures, trying to reinstall Windows on my new computer.
I just got this.
We got that with my old computer.
We might be dealing with a hard disk error.
My husband is setting up to try one more time.
Meanwhile, I’ve sent an email to tech support, briefly saying what’s been happening, and including this image. In their time zone, there’s a possibility I might get a call back, but if not, I won’t get a response until Monday, at the earliest.
In my email, I mentioned that, at this point, we might need to just send it back.
So we’ve tried to reinstall Windows on my new machine.
This is the farthest we got.
It would then cancel the installation, because of missing drivers.
It took a while for my husband to figure it out.
The recovery drive has Windows 10.
The new computer apparently has Windows 11.
I didn’t think it would, since it was last quality control checked before the update went out, but I guess new machines had it in advance? Who knows.
My husband’s machine is updated, so he’s wiping the recovery drive and will get Windows 11 on it.
Hopefully, that will solve the problem.
It’s now been over continuous hours, trying to get this thing up and running!
We’re pretty sure it was our Wi-Fi set up, and my logging into the Orbi network instead of the primary router that messed things up. The fact that I never got the option to log in again and select our Starlink router instead didn’t help matters.
I just got off the phone with tech support at Skytech Gaming. I ended up downloading an app to my phone that gave me a code that allowed him to see through my phone’s camera. As we were talking, the computer restarted it’s loop again, and I told him what had been going on.
As we went through the prompts, he said he was looking for logging into the internet, and that was the one thing that has never been part of the loop.
Long story short, by the end of the call, he very apologetically told me that we will have to reinstall Windows. Something went wrong in the start up and this installation got corrupted.
Which means we either hook up to another computer or get a recovery thumb drive.
*sigh*
One of the things that came with the paperwork in the box was a quality control check certificate.
The date on that is August 2, 2023. So as of then, the computer was fine.
What a pain. At least it’s a relatively easy fix, though. I’m just not sure if I want to hook up to another computer, or just get a recovery thumb drive. I like the idea of having the thumb drive. Smaller and more convenient. I’m going to have several hours after dropping the cats off at the vet tomorrow morning, so I could probably find one.
We shall see.
Not at all the sort of problem I would have anticipated!
Having said that, I can add that customer service was good and very prompt. There wasn’t much he could do over the phone, but he could at least give me a solution. With that, at least, I am happy.
I love technology, but my goodness, it doesn’t take much to mess it up!
Okay, so my new computer is still in the endless check update/just a moment…/restart/check your Wi-Fi loop.
Yes, we even have the machine hardwired to the network now, and it’s still in the loop.
I went to the website and registered my system, which gives me an extra year on the warranty. Then I went looking through their troubleshooting and support sections.
When I went to the support section, I got this pop-up.
Well now. It looks like the company with the terrible rating is NOT the company this system is from.
Also, the office the customer service number goes to is in California.
Depending on how things go, I think I’ll be calling them during office hours, tomorrow.
My husband has suggested I serve my computer up on his desk in the living room. That’s his leatherworking station. It’s covered with stuff I’d have to clear off, first. Then I’d have to dismantle my entire computer system and carry it over, hopefully without letting cats through, then setting it up again – with no way of knowing if it would make any difference until I restart the computer again.
Well, I have my new computer. It’s all hooked up, set up and I’m going through the first start up process.
Which has been going on for about 2 hours, now.
I seem to be stuck in to very slow loop.
It’s gone through the process of selecting language, country, keyboard, and time zone. At the beginning, I also had to log into our wifi.
I think that’s where I made my mistake.
The default option was our Netgear system, which boosts our wifi through the house. In my corner where I have set up my office, the log walls interfere with the signal, so I also have a wifi booster. Plus, my old computer had wifi antenna that my husband installed for me.
This computer came with wifi antenna, so that’s taken care of.
Anyhow, once the basics are set up, the system then goes to “checking for updates”, followed by a display of “just a moment…”
All of which takes several minutes. Especially the “Just a moment…” screen.
Then it restarts itself.
After the restart, it goes back to selecting country, language, etc., then I get this.
Well, obviously, the PC is plugged in, or this wouldn’t be showing at all.
The following options then all say to select “next”. I font get any instructions to connect to wifi, as it says in number 2. So it acts as if I’m at number 3.
If I hit “next”, though, it goes to “checking for updates”, and the loop continues.
Yes, I even tried a hard shut down. When I r4started, it went straight to the “choose your country” screen, and is now back at the “checking for updates” screen again.
We may have to dig up a cable to hook up to the router physically, because it seems to not be able to hook up to the wifi.
With my old computer, for some reason, it would no longer allow me to save the password to connect to the Omnii netgear booster. I would just connect automatically to our Starlink router directly. If the signal got too weak, I could log into the booster, but if I lost signal there for some reason, it want back to the default and logged me in. It couldn’t log me into the booster, because the password had to be manually input.
With the new computer, I never had a chance to put in the password for both. Just for the booster.
Which is not part of the loop I’m stuck in.
Oh, look. It’s restarting again.
My husband is now looking for the cable. Hopefully, it’s long enough to reach across the house.
The Re-Farmer 