Crash of 2006

So this weekend I crashed my computer. I was looking at a myspace design website for something I could use on my page. I went to the site my sister uses. I figured that would be okay since she’s never had a problem with it. (I want to emphasize that I was not on myspace. I was on a separate website that does free designs you can use on your myspace page.)

But things like to go wrong when I’m involved. When I tried to close the browser after looking through the designs, my computer froze up and would not respond at all. I had no choice but to hit the power button to shut it off. When I started it back up, it gave an error about the boot drive. I can’t remember the exact error now, but it would not start up. I couldn’t go into system recovery or safe mode or anything except BIOS. I googled the error on my laptop and checked all of the things the sites told me to check, but the computer still would not start up.

I called HP’s help line. My computer is four years old so it’s out of warranty and I got sent over to some guy who told me I had to send the computer to HP right away and let them try to repair it for $365. Actually, he said, “Three sixty-five dollars.” I thought, “Three point sixty-five dollars or three hundred sixty-five dollars?” Of course there is no way they would only charge $3.65 to repair the computer so the price was in fact $365.

I told the guy for $365 I’d rather just buy a new computer. When I said I’d have someone I knew (my uncle, who is a computer technician) look at it for me first, the guy kept insisting that only HP technicians could repair it and anyone else would completely destroy it.

“For $365, I think I’ll risk it,” I told him.

The guy would not let me off the phone. He kept insisting that the computer was so special only HP technicians would ever be capable of doing anything with it. It’s so special I don’t know how I was ever able to put in my own CD-ROM drive when the one that came with the computer stopped working two months after my warranty was up.

Finally, I said, “Okay, I’m hanging up now! Thanks for your time!” And hung up when he started back in on his “only HP can repair it” speech. The computer is with my uncle now and will undergo surgery sometime soon to figure out if anything can be done with it. I’ve already come to terms with possibly losing everything on the computer if that’s the only way he can get it working again. Most of the stuff on there isn’t vitally important. The only annoyances will be losing a few photos I hadn’t yet burned to a CD, my Quicken file that I hadn’t backed up in about a month (but at least I do have a backup so I’ll just have to put in all the transactions that aren’t on it), and my Sims 2 game files, including tons of downloads that I haven’t backed up since the beginning of the year.

I know, I know. I should back up more often. I’m really good about backing up my writing, which I store on external disks so a computer crash won’t cause me to lose them. But everything else I’m lazy about backing up as often as I should.

At least I still have my laptop to use at home for now. And thankfully I do keep my writing on disks and memory cards, not on my hard drive. I can grudgingly accept losing other things (really there were only about five pictures that weren’t backed up and they were just everyday pictures of my animals, which I already have a ton of), but I would cry for days if I lost any of my writing.