I suspect you've already tried it, but have you given it a hard reboot by taking out the battery for a few minutes before restarting?

::kicks self::

I'm embarrassed to admit, I forgot to try that.

The bad news is, it didn't fix the problem.

The good news is, the recovery utility from here did what I needed.

I am up and running and busily making fresh backups of everything.

Gud, you use solid state hard drives, right? Anyone else?

You built yourself, right? What OS are you running?

I'm looking at preconfigured units, starting with Frys (so disillusioned with them recently) and then Best Buy (less disillusioned, but I hate the crap they install on computers), and primarily SSD comes on gaming beasts, which I don't require. I'm expecting an SSD drive to take a $500-$600 computer up by about $300 all considered.

What other vendors are good places to look for *non* power desktop PCs with SSD options? I really really don't want to build it myself or install SSD into a configured PC I get that comes with no software discs. I just decided that this laptop was the last non-SSD device I should buy (ha! When I look at the next SSD Macbook prices I will revisit that, but it seemed a fair call at the time).

I think my desktop monitor has been with me for 12 years. 20 or 21 inch LCD, expensive as fuck when I bought it, apart from the tinny audio, not one reason to replace it, but since it's not my primary monitor, that Viewsonic keeps on keeping on, while budget PCs die or become obsolete behind it.

So, after spending $250 at Weaknees, the Tivo is still periodically crashing to the grey screen of death at random intervals. It's working right now, but who knows how long that will last.

(When I emailed Weaknees customer service to complain that they had, essentially, charged me $250 plus shipping to return the Tivo to me in exactly the same semi-broken condition as before, they responded with an incredibly snotty email to the effect that it wasn't their fault the unit they'd just repaired twice wasn't working, and if I want them to diagnose anything else it would cost another $99, and anyway, I didn't pack it very well when I shipped it to them. So I'm done with them, because they are assholes.)

The one potentially useful suggestion they had was for me to get a UPS, instead of just a surge protector. The price range I'm seeing is about $40 on the low end into the hundreds of dollars. I'm guessing that for my purposes, the low-end models will do just fine for me - any reason I should spend more? Any specific features I should look for?

Links to two articles on SSDs.

[link]

[link]

Kinda discouraging, but somewhat dated; the first is from May 2011 and the second is from April 2013.

Anyone use plex? Gud, maybe?

I can't get Media Center to run on my Windows 7 computer. I install it, everything looks fine, but it won't ever launch.

In the office we have three MacBook Air 11" models all running on SSD with no problems. Kristin is running an 11" MacBook Air also on an SSD. I've converted 6 of my 19 Mac Mini machines to SSD and haven't had any issues there either. The Mac Minis are used for audio playback a lot so it's a pretty demanding use.

I also have a Mac Mini running on SSD installed at the San Diego Zoo that has been in use daily for about a year and half now with no issues.

Never mind -- I think it was either Norton or Windows Firewall that was strangling it. Without telling me.

I use an SSD on my desktop computer. I'm running Windows 7 on it. Linux too if you count my VM. I used to dual boot Linux, but running a VM is just more practical for me. And yeah, I build my own.

I think the easiest thing to do is buy the drive and computer and then use something like Acronis true image to do a sector copy of the computer's hard drive to the SSD. No re-installing anything.

I've used plex on my NAS, but it was too slow. But as I read on, it looks like you got things resolved anyhow.

I'm on my second SSD (bought for capacity, not because of failure) and I've yet to have a single hiccup. My first SSD (a X-25M) is now in use in a $300 mini-ITX computer.

I also put my Windows Cache on my standard hard-drive to lessen the number of writes. Everything is still very fast despite that.