Technical Tragedy

Well, it happens. Even though it can be prevented it happens. And it happened to me as 2008 drew to a close. I lost EVERYTHING on my computer. Christmas card address labels that I've kept updated for over 15 years, two files full of recipes, all of my photo albums from April 2007 until December 2008 (though two that I had uploaded to Kodak Gallery were saved), and numerous other files. I don't even know at this point what was lost - time will tell. When I got my laptop two years ago, we had Vista installed. It's been good, except that Jim was bothered by the sound quality - a crackling noise which was noticed mostly when watching videos, listening to music, or making a skype call. (Was this a problem for me? Not really). After working with Dell personnel twice in December -one 2 1/2 hour call trying to make several changes, and a house visit from a Dell technician who replaced the mother board - the problem was still there. They concluded that it was a problem with Vista and suggested that Vista be re-installed.

So the call came from the Dell person saying he was ready to walk Jim through the steps to do the re-install. He failed to mention that this would involve re-formatting the hard drive, and that all of my info could be lost. If we had known obviously we would have backed everything up. Jim remembers that the first time we did it (to update XP?? I don't really get all of this stuff . . . ) that it didn't affect anything. Who knows . . . anyway, I was left not only with Vista re-installed but a completely clean slate as well.

It took awhile to really hit me what the loss really was, and then of course I was not too thrilled with the whole thing. Anyway, I'm in the process now of trying to get back all of my email contacts. So if you are a reader of my blog and haven't received any emails from me for awhile, it could be because I don't have your contact. So send me an email, and I'll re-add you to my contact list. And don't forget to BACK UP your files!

Oh, and in case you're wondering . . . no, the problem still is not completely solved.