So back in the day, you knew it was a bad day when the head of the hammer came flying off after using it for decades hitting nails, or, way back in the day when your favorite axe did the same thing or worse, have the handle break on you, the very axe that helped you clear the “back 40” and now decades later “let you down”.
Well welcome to the 21st century, where a 4 or 5 year old laptop can do the same. Ain’t technology great?
So yesterday was supposed to be a relaxing day off but when the laptop I had been using (Lenovo G510 originally equipped with Windows 8) started making disk read error sounds (yes, nerds have an ear for that) I was like “I better attach my external drive for one last backup”. So I did that and then started tinkering with this PC.
The history on this PC is interesting, it was my wife’s (to replace the laptop she had prior to that, a 2008 Dell Inspiron, that I am using right now but with Linux Mint 19.0 (Tara) Operating Sysytem (OS) on it) until earlier this year when it kept rebooting on her for no reason and she was forever losing documents, etc. By then I had already took her files she had on there when it was a new Windows 8.1 laptop, placed them on an external drive and installed Windows 10 on it from SCRATCH.
So I got her a new Dell laptop with Windows 10 and I took over using it daily and was able to get a more stable Windows OS on it (version 1803) so I could use it as my primary PC for personal use. After yesterday’s experience, I had my doubts as to how long I was going to be able to trust this Win10 (1803) PC. THEN, after checking three times that morning I finally got this:
OK, so maybe THAT was why it was behaving so badly. It was like it would not admit there was an update coming BUT it was doing all kinds of things to the PC that made it practically unusable. I also checked the event log thinking that the CPU or memory was at fault and found some 55 second delays caused by “firmware” as well as some disk related errors, but it was rather hard to tell even for this nerd.
But today took the cake. While crafting a post earlier today I suddenly got this full screen message:
No one wants to see this message. So when it hits 100% and Microsoft has all their details .. then you can hit the power button and reboot. Until then the CPU fan is blazing away .. not sure what all the PC was doing in the background behind this curtain. I trust MS like I trust the government 🙂
So now I am transitioning to Linux OS for all my personal computer work. I have another 7 year old HP laptop that is prime material for becoming yet another Linux PC. Then there is the 4-5 year old Lenovo, and the question remains, can it be a trusted PC with Linux as the OS?
So my final test was to run CHKDSK (a 30 year old program) on the Win10 PC’s hard drive:
Results:
Even before it scanned it, Windows 10 said in effect “you really don’t have to do this”, because it was checking it all along.
So I guess this winter I will be “recycling” PCs, running the Linux version of CHKDSK on the hard drives BEFORE I place the Linux OS on them.
1st world problems I guess, there are days I would almost rather work out in the woods with an axe and build stuff with a hammer and sit by the fire and read books, but then I would not have a chance to share life with y’all!
Thank you for sharing your time with me as I vent about life 🙂
Take care my friends.
-SF1