Got a question about technology? Ask it here. Discussion of hardware, software, TiVos, multi-region DVDs, Windows, Macs, LINUX, hand-helds, iPods, anything tech related. Better than any helpdesk!
And... just to vent a little...
My main machine died on Saturday. Not sure yet if it's the power supply or the motherboard yet. I haven't had the time to really diagnose it. I do all of my school related stuff on it when I'm at home, but fortunately, I have everything course-related backed up to my trusty keychain thumbdrive. The laptop is less than ideal for working on this stuff, so I pulled the data drive from the main machine and installed it in my gaming machine. Now the gaming machine won't boot. Getting a disk error that tells me to give it the three finger salute and try again... to infinity. Le sigh.
Somehow I must've jangled a cable loose in there somewhere. Now I have two computers to fix. God help me if the laptop fails.
Sorry for the computer woes, DX.
I was having trouble with my main computer for a bit in that it would take 3-4 attempts to boot to finally boot up. It turned out to be bad memory. A bit of new memory and everything is good again. My BILs computer (which I built) also was having an issue powering up and that turned out to be a bad plug on a power strip.
Mac question. My Mac is starting to suggest updating to High Sierra, but I have heard that if your drive is encrypted it can be a very long upgrade? Anybody know for sure?
Is it a hard drive or an SSD?
Update on mine. Wasn't the power supply, so a replacement motherboard is arriving tomorrow. It's always tricky with motherboards. The machine is about four years old, so the MB is no longer available new. I could go with newer model, but then I would not only have to reinstall the OS, but also run the likely risk that the new board isn't compatible with Win 7 (or even Win 8 at this point), or even the CPU. So I ordered a refurbished board from Hong Kong. We'll see.
On the other machine, somehow the SSD forgot it was a system disk, and now I have to reinstall the OS. Not nearly as big a deal as on the main machine, because there are far fewer programs to reinstall. Should be a busy weekend.
Yeah, in all my years of building my own computers I think I've managed to only once upgrade a CPU without also replacing the motherboard and also usually the memory. It can be hard to change any of those without doing all three.
Using Linux is so nice for homemade machines. I hate the whole activation dance with Windows. My kids computers are homemade specials and have Windows and I sprung the extra few dollars to get retail rather than OEM Windows just to make activation smoother.
DX, on the second machine, what OS is it? I've had some luck with the startup repair option on Windows 10.
Daniel, it's Win 7. Already tried the repair option, which apparently made things worse, i.e., now the install disk doesn't recognize either of the SSDs in the machine as viable boot drives. <Shrug> I'll get it figured out eventually. I'm just a little out of practice.
If anyone is curious it took about 90 minutes for me to upgrade to High Sierra. Glad I didn't try it during the work day :)
