'NORMAL' SERVICE HAS BEEN RESUMED

I'm so happy!

Copyright-free image from Art Freebies

It's been a traumatic time - but my poorly computer is all better again!

You wouldn't believe what's been going on. Last post, I mentioned I took the computer into Currys to see if I could get any help. Well, I did!

Currys' new thing is to repair in-branch wherever possible, so I (for once) was in the right place at the right time. Their Go-To person (female) was very patient, listened to the whole sorry tale then phoned up their IT personnel - who advised I bring the machine in so they could verify the hard drive was the one they supplied. Which they did - and yes, my machine was already obsolete at that time so I had indeed been given a reconditioned, reformatted Windows 98 one.

See this? Only 29.3gb, plus an A Drive that doesn't actually exist

My helpful uber-geek person at the place in Brenford had hit the 'return to factory settings' button - whisking my hard drive back into the distant past (Windows 98 was the one before Windows ME, which is the one before Windows XP) hence the miniscule hard drive, and the resulting problem of the Windows XP reboot discs being rendered unable to be read by the machine.

Herewith 2nd call to the Currys IT personnel by the wonderfully helpful lady at Currys - who handed the phone over to me so I could explain more clearly. The IT person then instructed the helpful Go-To Girl in what to do, and voila, my machine is now in a GO situation again! Hurrah!

There's the little sucker - hiding on the right! So now I have Drives A, C, D, E and F... shouldn't there be a B somewhere, to complete the set?

By now, of course, you are slavering at the bit to find out what the magic solution was. How did it get fixed when I only had  a 29.3gb hard drive? Because the bloody thing had partitioned itself... in a secret partition which even the Go-To Girl didn't know existed! And there it was: 203 un-allocated gb just waiting to be told what to do! So G-T G named the partition, formatted it... and I am now the proud possessor of a C Drive, an F Drive, two drives for CDs and DVDs - and the mysterious floppy disc A Drive, for which I don't even have a drawer.... Isn't Technology wonderful?

Suffice to say, I'll be getting back to posting about the artwork soon.