Watching and Waiting

It's been seven days since the last time I tried to repair my daughter's laptop. The new screen assembly arrived Friday in the mail, so after dinner we tempted fate once again and waded into the uncharted waters of gutting a laptop.

Two hours later, we had assembled, dis-assembled, re-assembled, dis-assembled and finally re-assembled one lats time. By the final assembly we were pretty darn good at it, but I have no intention of trading in my day job for laptop work.

The screen? It works great. Brilliant colors, crisp features, everything you could ask for in a display.

The computer? It vexes me. After starting up normally and working for a full ten minutes, it decided the mouse wasn't needed and turned it off. Thirty minutes of fooling around later and the shutdown option was available and selected.

Hmmm...now what? Waiting for it to turn off on it's own burned through another 30 minutes. The all-powerful and all-knowing Internet suggested many options. "Boot to BIOS Diagnostics (F10) and run memory and hard drive diagnostic tests", it said. Fun times, but no progress. "Run Last Known Good Configuration (Advanced)". Oh yeah, that was helpful. "Boot to Windows Advanced boot options (F8) and Run Repair Your Computer". It started after that, but most applications wouldn't run.

So many choices. All take time to run through and try. Start up, make a choice, wait untold minutes, try to shut down, wait untold minutes, pull the plug and throw the blasted machine into the street, running it over repeatedly with my car. Sorry, musta dozed off there for a minute. It was a nice dream.

Start up, wait. Shut down, wait. Start up, wait. Shut down, wait. Watching the screen and waiting for a sign of life.