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Instead of Twitter Tuesday, I'm rearranging a bit to bring you this "news update," so Twitter Tuesday is going to be Twitter Thursday this week. 🙂
As the title states, computer woes are in the news again! According to CNN, Microsoft is investigating a 'screen of death.'" Apparently, some of their latest updates are causing odd problems for some computer users including "a black desktop and little else on their screen." We all stay way too busy with senior home care giving and playing with grandchildren to want to fight with our computers! And, in those rare but nasty situations where the computer crashes or worse, it's vital we have a good back up to get us working again as quickly as possible.
Soooo, with no further adieu, let's take some time to back up our files and documents to an extended hard drive, DVDs, or perhaps an online site. Once that's done, it's time to check that our Windows updates are up-to-date (I'm hopeful they'll have a fix out soon), we've defragmented our computer, and that our protection software (antivirus, anti-spyware, etc.) is all current.
Even when we do all this, we can still have problems. This past week, my computer has unexpectedly crashed three times. It doesn't have the same symptoms described in the CNN article, though I have to wonder…. Needless to say, once I got the third crash, I stopped everything to make sure ALL my files were backed up.
After the backup and a check with one of my favorite computer software tools, PC Matic by PC Pitstop, I thought about what I'd done in the last week and realized I'd added three new programs, plus a couple of long standing programs had issued major upgrades. Then, of course, I found out about the possible Microsoft issues. All of that means there's a good possibility some of the programs aren't getting along with with the others. Isn't it great when our grandparenting skills can help diagnose computer issues!
Unfortunately, I don't have the time to figure it out, so I'm doing some restoring and reinstalling, while I work on my tower. Not fun, but hopefully I will have a faster, nicer-behaving computer. And, by the time I finish rebuilding it, Microsoft should have some new updates out. So if their woes were causing my woes, those should be a welcome cure as well. That will definitely encourage this busy Sandwich Generation senior home care giver, grandmother, and writer! And now that I've reminded you, we can all be happy and busy together. 🙂
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I had trouble last week and had to remove old programs and update new ones. I appreciate the back-up reminder! I'm going to do so today!
Mary
I’m so irked with myself. I got interrupted and forgot to doublecheck that everything copied over ok. Discovered several missing items in my backups! PTL I have backups of backups so I still have them, just extra work. But it sure is a good reminder to backup a LOT! 🙂
It is a shame that PC's are acting-up so much. I guess in this case Mac would be better.
It’s always been this way. I love Macs – we had them for years – got our first the year after they first came out. We finally switched to PC when all of us (adult kids AND parents 🙂 ) were taking college classes. Every semester at least one of us needed a PC for a homework assignment. I discovered that, thanks to the wonderful Mac, I could use PCs easily too and actually liked how they “think.” We all still love Macs but it would be hard to switch back because of software issues. I have to admit though, it gets more tempting with each problem. 🙂 🙂 🙂