Our RV Adventures

I spent most the day tracking down missing software and downloading needed programs from the Internet. One thing I’m doing is that I’m only reinstalling software as I need it, which should keep some of the clutter down.

:Later I also connected up my Backup Drive and started copying over data files, documents, pictures, videos, and music.All told, about 300 GB worth, including over 29,000 photos since 2006, two years before we started RV’ing.

This new computer is only about two years newer than my old one, but much, much faster. So in the end, this will all be worth it.

I was kind of surprised by this HD failure since I got no warning whatsoever from the motherboard’s S.M.A.R.T. monitoring (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology; often written as SMART)

SMART is a system that monitors HD reliability and reports if there are any problems. Now it won’t catch everything, but it does give an indication on 60-70% of failures.

So I guess my HD was in that 30-40%

Something next week, after we’re at Medina Lake, I’ll do my freezer trick and see what I come up with.

Dennis and Carol Hill picked us up a little after 5pm and we headed off  north of Willis to have dinner at the Fish Pond Restaurant. We’ve eaten here a number of times, but it was a first for Dennis and Carol.

And everyone seemed to enjoy their meal, with Carol having Liver and Onions, Dennis having the Chicken Fried Steak, while Jan went with her favorite Chicken Fried Chicken. I tried something a little different, the Steak Fingers. I guess everyone liked what they had, since there were four clean plates at the end.

And as usual when RV’ers get together, we talked for longer than we ate. I know, I know,hard to believe, right. But we did. In fact, I don’t thint we’ve ever been out with a group of RV’ers where it didn’t take at least 3 hours.

I think it‘s a rule.

Sign up for Passport America before 4/30 and get 4 extra FREE Months!

Actually between the restaurant and the visiting in our rig afterwards, it was over 3 hours. But I think that was so Carol and Dennis could play with karma, who seemed to enjoy all the attention. I kind of figured she might run and hide, but she’s turned out to be a real people cat.

Thought for the Day:

I changed my password everywhere to ‘incorrect.’ That way when I forget it, it always reminds me, ‘Your password is incorrect’

asdfsdf

When I got up this morning, I was welcomed by a black & white screen on the computer, but worse was what it said.

Can Not Find Boot Device:

Please Insert Bootable Media

Crap!

Translated, that means it can’t find the hard drive.

And since I’m pretty sure it didn’t run off, that means it’s died.

Crap!

Jan said she was online this morning, and about 7:40 she tried to go to another website and the computer froze. And when she rebooted, she got the B&W screen. So I turned it off to let it cool down.

Luckily I did a full backup less than a week ago, so I’m pretty good there. But first I needed to get a working desktop PC going again. I’ve got the laptop, so I got it out so we could get online for the day.

Normally the laptop only gets used on travel days for our Delorme GPS map program and Silverleaf engine display. In fact the last time I used it like this was last year on our gate guarding gig

While I was online checking email, I was thinking about what I wanted to do. I had a new 3 TB harddrive that I bought a while back for a client project that didn’t pan out, so I could put the new HD back in it. Or I could put the new HD in a newer computer that I had stowed away.

The only problem is that the newer one is a full size desktop model, while the one that died is a mini-desktop unit that sits under the monitor. But since the full-size one was newer and faster, that’s the one I decided to go with.

Digging out the computer and the HD, I put the two together and started to install Win7. I decided to try out the Win7 install on a USB drive that I bought a while back.

Win7 on USB

I got this back last December, but checking on Amazon tonight, it’s no longer available, but it allows you to quickly install a new copy of Win7. Of course you still need a MIcrosoft serial number, but I can reuse the old one from the sticker on the side of the case.

Sign up for Passport America before 4/30 and get 4 extra FREE Months!

The install went very quickly with no major hiccups, and about 45 minutes later I was downloading and installing the necessary drivers and apps. At this point I put it aside for dinner.

Next I started downloading and installing the programs that I wanted – Chrome, LibreOffice, Open Live Writer, Total Commander, etc. These will get me back online, and then in the next day or so I’ll hookup my backup drive and transfer the rest over,

But I also may be able to recover some of the last week’s data that didn’t get backed up. When I turned the computer back on, it actually booted up and ran – for about 10 minutes, and then it locked up. So the problem was heat-related. Which means that I’ll probably be able to get some data off using the freezer trick

You do this by putting the drive in a zip-lock bag and leave it in the freezer for a couple of hours. Then you take it out and hook it up as quickly as possible, and then copy  data off as quickly as possible. This works better if you make a list ahead of time of the most important stuff you need.

Tomorrow we’re having dinner with Dennis and Carol Hill at the Fish Pond Restaurant, and we’re really looking forward to it.

Thought for the Day:

Dear Karma, I have a list of people you missed.

asdfdf