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Tue 24 Dec, 2002 06:58 am
Sunday night, I turned on my computer. I was greeted by a dark, streaky screen, and really weird colors. If I set the page to "Maximize, I see nothing but a smoky dark grey color. On "minimize", the color is a streaky pink, and some of the letters have little lines next to them. I sent some PMs to people, and asked them how they came out. I told them which colors I used, and they told me that it came out fine. Printing works normally.
I virus scanned, ran my Norton utilities, ran the Windows program that searches for corrupt files, and ran P.C. Pitstop. Everything passed with flying colors. I Thought that it might be the video card. A friend of a friend lent me one for testing. I switched them, and got the same thing. Then I though it might be the monitor, but when I pushed the buttons on it, the menus came up looking normal. When I tried to use my diagnostics floppy, which is in DOS, I could not even read the white on black writing, so I suspect that this is a hardware, rather than a software problem. (Maybe one of the components on the motherboard is fried?)
I was on the phone with Dell for over an hour each time twice yesterday. I think that the computer magazines are right when they say that Dell's service has deteriorated. With both techs, at every step, they had to put me on hold, probably to give them time to read the manual.
I called a repair person, but at this time of the year, I only got his answering machine. I did not expect him to call me back until after the holidays.What I plan to do is to bring the computer in to Best Buys the day after Christmas. I don't want to do it today, because then I would not have it over the 25th, and they would not be working on it anyway.
So please excuse me if I have more than my usual share of typos, Some of the letters look a little garbled, and I can't always catch the mistakes.
This afternoon, I am going to my communities cyber cafe, just to relieve the eyestrain.
I want to give fishin' a great big hug ((((HUG)))) and a "thank you". He went above and beyond in his attempts to help me!!!
Have any of you had an experience like this?
I can only offer sympathy, Phoenix - not elucidation.
You have not offended any Magical Persons, have you?
Good luck with the repairs - I hope it is quick.
dlowan- Are you referring to the dreaded Goddess of Computers and Cyberspace? I don't know, but maybe if I put together a quick offering, she might be appeased. Waddya think?
Worth a try.... we are discussing magic on the christmas digression thread - and you get a kiss, if you hurry!
I think I have found my guardian deity!!!!!
Yikes!
Knocking on wood relentlessly here.....
Glad to hear you're all better, Phoenix.
I've had my computer barely two years (time flies) and I consider myself lucky. It's an eMachine and I purchased it for a whopping $49, after rebates (yes, it came with a printer and an HP monitor). The only thing I've had to replace is the keyboard. And for $8.99, I'm not complainin at all.
Rae- I have mine four years, and I don't even want to tell you what I spent on this thing. At the time, it was state of the art, and now I can donate it to the Smithsonian to place it next to their dinosaur collection.
Funny thing is, it does exactly what I want it to do. (knock wood)
It was probably the picture tube.
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