Saturday 24 October 2009

Ice cold in Outlook...


My apologies for the fact that blogging has been somewhat light lately, (Lightlately sounds like a Dickens character from some Highland craggy castle - "Och Miss Lightlately, yooor arms are sooo heiry and strong fro' the washing of the Tweeds..."..."Tha's because it's Misterrrr Dougal Lightlately..."); but unlike Cranmer, the black hole I've been staring into has been the screen on my computer.

You see, my 'work' PC has been giving my backside the earache for some weeks now; Mrs S's PC sings like a bird, and although it has the dreaded Vista, we can make it do what we want after a few clops round the mouse, and perhaps a Hob Nob, but my PC has had a serious sulk in the Outlook department, which I use exclusively for business. In fact, I'm quite a dab hand at Outlook, although it's not the latest version, and although I'm not really a techie, definitely not a geek, I reckon I can turn the mitts to most things.

(Well, except where mains electricity is prevalent, especially after I pulled 30 amps from the back of the cooker while poking around inside, and it chucked me across to the other side of the kitchen with a loud squawk, and caused Mrs S some anguish while she gently folded her twitching husband into the recovery position, which was interesting...). Oh and also I'm buggered if I can work out why the bottom of our frost-free freezer accumulates ice quicker that the Great Scandinavian Glacier. In fact, it may not be long before the whole of the Turrets will be encased in a bloody great blue ice cube, eventually sliding downhill and probably reaching Bodiam Castle by 2015! But I digress.

My Outlook programme, which contains carefully filed emails from business acquaintances, decided to get nasty, and after getting into a serious hump last week, stopped working altogether. I'd been backing everything up over the past few days onto one of those hard disks from PCWorld, which hold about 500 squillobytes of kit, and had just finished the final upload, when the programme crashed around my ears.

It was smouldering and very upset with something or other...

The good people at 'Computeractive' and also 'Daniweb', had been spending some considerable time to try and sort out the problem of 'Outlook freezing', (there you are, freezers again...), with helpful advice and attempts to solve the problem, but nope; none of the ideas worked, and my PC still (probably) had a corrupt PST file flying around inside like a fart in a colander, intent on causing mayhem and destruction.

My language had deteriorated to the utterly obscene, ranging from Early Connolly, through Anglo Saxon Woss, and finally becoming Normal Geldof, and at one stage, after one particularly spectacular incident, JRT ran from my office with both front paws clasped over her ears, growling concernedly, and Mrs S was beginning to wonder why she could'nt commence beating me round the head with several garden implements.

So I reinstalled Windows! Yup; the modern day equivalent of driving your mother's Jaguar into a passing church service for confused parish councillors...

Just like that; all done in a day and it isn't anything like as painful as you'd expect, as long as you've saved all the important stuff of course. You wouldn't believe how much crap and rubbish my poor old PC had accumulated over the few years of it's existence! There were old programmes long forgotten, bits of smut from chums (thanks a bunch Roger, next time send it without sound...), some files duplicated to hero proportions, a piece of software for some kit which I never knew existed, some mail from a nice Nigerian wanting to use my bank, and a cache of stuff from some adventure game I'd been given years ago, which after spending about six months solving all the clues, ended up in a cellar under a station in blind terror with some chanting Acolytes from a Dan Brown story!

And now, I can log on with lightning speed, the hard disk has 40% less junk on it, which just shows how I'm not really that good at chucking things away, and Outlook downloaded 3016 emails from my server with a few quiet clicks and a huge sigh of relief... And I can also listen to music again as the sound system had originally packed up, so I'm feeling pretty proud I can tell you!

But I do want to get all my pictures back on, because my favourite one of JRT, before she came to live with us, is still in the HD, and I want that back pretty soon as a desk top...

15 comments:

Old BE said...

Yes, I've heard that Windows 1.0 is pretty swift to re-install! I wouldn't know, I'm still on MS-DOS.

I was once attempting to re-install my machine from scratch it having ground to a halt as they tend to do after some time. I clicked on "wipe" only to discover that I had delete the flaming backup drive!

That was hard to get back, but luckily my photos were restored eventually. Amazing how these zeros and ones mean so much to us.

Glad you are back online!

rvi said...

Well done Sir. Maybe this is therefore appropriate. Just for you!

Trubes said...

Dear Scrobs, I do emphasise with you. I'm a total PC ludite.
I've even got a book called Brilliant Internet for the Over
50's, yet still I struggle!
I'd love to be able to publish some pictures but I'm at a loss as how to do it!
My new holiday post is up for you to read.x

Di.x

Anonymous said...

Windows builds up so much crud in its system that an occasional format of the hard drive and a clean install is the only way to stop your computer from getting slower and slower.

A clean install is a lot of work but it's like getting a new computer for free.

I now run a Macbook Pro which has a Windows partition that I venture into about every other week. Every time I do so, the session invariably starts with me having to upload all the latest patches from Micrsoft.

I miss Windows computers less and less with every passing week!

lilith said...

I am so impressed Scrobbers. I have a fraction of your tech savoir. I totally rely on Elby to back things up/rescue stuff/type and think for me :-) I did however, after many years, work out how people get video songs onto Tubeyou, inspired by the realisation that it can't be that hard or Tubeyou would be full of videos of physics equations and large hadron colliders.

Very sorry to hear about the electric shock. Is that how you got your superpowers?

Mr Letgodsortemout has a blog at last!

Sen. C.R.O'Blene said...

Morning Blues!

I reckon the little squeak an old Amstrad 464 made as it wound in the tape, will live with me forever...

Bet you did what I did several times on Friday, seeing all the stuff vanish and wonder if you'd ever see it again!

Sen. C.R.O'Blene said...

Ha ha ha Reevers!

Very apt that one!

Years ago, I was taping on a reel to reel recorder, some music from the radio.

You may know that it was almost impossible to gauge the on/off timing and there's be loads of clicks, squeaks etc as each tune joined up with the next one.

Somehow, in - I think 1974, that song got back in the charts (they did stupid things like that then), and I'd switched the recorder on for another song, which was 'Chanson d'Amour', because I actually quite liked it...

So, every time we hear the last line of your clip, we immediately start with 'Chhhaaaaaaaannnnnsooooooooooonnnnneee etc etc...

Sad isn't it...

Sen. C.R.O'Blene said...

Trubidoos!

Great to see you back, and I'll call by very soon!

I'm not really the expert, as is clear from the post, but to get pics on your post, if you're on Blogger, you click on the little picture icon in the row above where you're typing, and a box pops up.

Click on 'browse', and you should see a list of places on your PC, where should be a yellow folder saying My pictures, or just Pictures. Just click on that in the box, and eventually, you'll see all your lists of pics.

By sifting through these folders, there'll be the one(s) you want to show in your blog, and once you have found the right one to upload, click the blue button, and you'll see a message saying 'Click done and your pic will be uploaded' (or similar).

If you make a mistake, you can just delete it, as on the blog writing box, it appears as a load of gobbledygook...

I hope this helps, as we're all rather anxious to see the famous Trubes in all her Glory... ;0x

Sen. C.R.O'Blene said...

Killers!

How are yaaaah?

I'll be over pretty damn qick, Lils says you're up and running, (Good show...) but see the above if it's any help...

Sen. C.R.O'Blene said...

Lakes, that's very true!

Since Friday, there have been numerous updates to download, and I'm spending ages just adjusting everything to get back to normal!

At the moment, my keyboard is working on some foreign language which makes etypyfiingiiong difficult...

Sen. C.R.O'Blene said...

Lils - you're way ahead of me on Youtrube... (wonder if she will get the pics on...?), because in - say Guido, he has posts which have the actual screen as the comment, which I just don't understand!

The cooker incident happened at the last Turrets, and I'd been mucking about for ages trying to wire it all up, turning the switch on and off several times, and eventually forgetting to check if it was switched off - which it wasn't...

The only powers I got from that were a stark, serious reminder from a chum, that I could have killed myself or even worse...

rvi said...

Ah zut alors! Zose naughty French songs?

Chanson d'amour, followed by everybody on the dance floor singing at full volume the next lines, "Rumpy pumpy pump, je t'adore". Zose ver ze days my fren, no?

I sink Harriet vud haf un fit eef she 'eard zat naughty Maurice Chevalier zing: "Zank evan for leetle gerrls, for leetle gerls get biggerr every day..." Hien, vot could he have meant?

WV: procyped - is this illegal yet?

Philipa said...

Glad all sorted, Scrobs. My PC is so slow now but I can't face what you've been through. I muddle..

Sen. C.R.O'Blene said...

Strange to say Reevers, it was in the charts, and did well!

Probably something to do with the Provisional Wing of the Edith Piaf Appreciation Society!

Sen. C.R.O'Blene said...

Pips, it can seem daunting, and you have to spend the week like I have, re-tweaking things, but mine actually stopped working, so there was no alternative!

Without being too techie, a damn good Disk clean-up and Defrag can work wonders!

If you're not sure, email me!