07.02.06
Tech Support 24/7
I had a few interesting topics prepared for my next blog entry, but as my PC would have it, this will be yet another post about tech problems. I opened my computer at 1400 hours (2 pm), anticipating my weekly NWN game at 3. Immediately upon loading Windows, I noticed a disturbing lack of icons for half the shortcuts on my desktop. After 5 minutes with neither MSN nor my antivirus program opening, I opened My Computer and was faced with a far, far more disturbing lack of drives. Two drives were missing: The ones on my 200 GB SATA disc.
For the second time in recent history, my SATA controller had comitted harakiri for no apparent reason.
Time to panic? I think not. For I am the God of fucking Computers. First on the agenda was praising my luck that my system disc is PATA mounted. I wouldn’t have gotten far without my Windows drive. I opened Firefox (wisely installed on my system drive) and found the necessary RAID drivers on Gigabyte’s Knossos of a website (ie. ancient and labyrinthine). Then I spent almost an hour uninstalling and reinstalling those goddamn drivers in 20 different ways and sequences, during which I could at no point make my original driver install CD recognize that no RAID controller was installed:
Installer: “VIA 8237 Serial ATA Driver ——-> installed”
Me: “WTF!? I JUST UNINSTALLED IT MANUALLY YOU STUPID SETUP PROGRAM!”
Installer: “No no, you don’t understand. It’s installed! It works perfectly.”
Me: “Then why are none of my SATA drives showing up!?”
Installer: “I don’t know what you’re raving about, everything works… perfectly.”
Anyway, in the end, I opened up my PC, removed the SATA cable from the non-existent drive, reconnected the cable and started up the computer again. Then I reinstalled the SATA controller, rebooted the machine, and everything was working. Why? No idea, but I managed to fix it 7 minutes before my game was scheduled.
Then it turned out the game was postponed until next week, but I’m so damn pleased with myself right now that nothing short of a nuclear explosion in my back yard will bring me down today.
So yeah… I’m tech support. I don’t just work with tech support, I fucking am tech support, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, because when I don’t get paid for it, I have to do it for myself on my own bloody computer.
Time for an upgrade, I reckon.
