When the Computer Dies

My Dell desktop, an Inspiron 3850, was purchased in February 2021. I didn't like it from the start.

The memory card access hole broke as soon as I inserted a card. Dell tried to tell me I'd inserted the card too hard; I told them I'd been using computers since they were in diapers and knew very well how to insert a memory card into a desktop. They sent me a new memory card reader, but I had to take the computer apart and install it myself, which I did. And then bought an external memory card reader because the one in the computer is flimsy.

Then I discovered that the video card, which I had been assured was strong enough to handle my favorite video game, Skyrim, did not in fact work with Skyrim. Nor could I upgrade the video card because when I looked to see if I could, I found videos indicating that upgrading generally burned up the motherboard, even to the point of catching the entire computer on fire.

So back in May when the thing started telling me "No Hard Drive Detected," at start up, I think part of me was hoping for a new computer even though I try to use my computers for five years or more before I get a new one. I continued to use it, and nothing I did told me the hard drive was bad. I ran the Windows disk check, and the DOS check, and went to the Dell site and let its little support assistant run a check, and everything said the hard drive was fine.

I did find where the "No Hard Drive Detected" error seemed to happen a lot in Dells and it seemed to be a BIOS firmware issue. I read the instructions on how to enter the BIOS and set everything back to factory default. I did this several times.

The computer would run ok and then the error message would come back. I'd turn the computer off, and it would boot up and I'd go on about my business. But it became more and more frequent, more indicative of a problem.

I started looking at new computers.

We have computer repair stores in the nearby city. One of them has a very good reputation. I decided to take it there and see if it was the hard drive or the BIOS. If it was the BIOS, I figured they could fix that easily enough. Plus, I could live with the boot-up issue long enough to get through the year and finish up the documentation for the taxes, which was my main concern, if the hard drive wasn't bad.

I did not want the computer out of my site. I didn't want to leave it overnight. I never have computers fixed. If I can't fix them, I take the hard drive out them, and put the rest of it in the hazard waste pickup at the landfill. I have a box full of hard drives. 

Also, I did not want to go by myself. You see, in the mid-1990s I went into a local computer store, where I'd had a computer built. Apparently, women aren't supposed to go, even now, into computer stores, and 30 years ago I was assaulted by the owner when I went in for assistance with the computer he'd built for me. I spoke to a detective about it, but it was one of those "your word against his" things, aside from a few finger marks on my arm where he'd held me, and the county prosecutor didn't want to press charges. In the end, the sheriff's office convinced the man that leaving town was a good idea, and he closed up shop and left the state. 

They were satisfied with that outcome. I was not.

So, my husband went with me Friday to tote my computer into the fix-it place. We got there at 9:05 a.m. There was not a woman in site. A man took the computer from my husband, took it in the back and hooked it up, and then said, after about 15 seconds, that the hard drive was failing. Would I like him to replace it? I asked what that would cost, and he quoted me a price for a 215 GB drive. I told him that would be useless to me because I already had 192 GB of stuff on my 1 TB drive. I said put the screws back in it and give it back to me.

Next thing I know, out comes the super salesman, who says he is the company owner. He promises me a 512 GB SSD hard drive along with a secondary 2 TB storage drive, and they would transfer everything over for me and it would be like nothing ever happened. On top of that, he'd give me Adobe photoshop and some other programs. Oh, and it would have Windows 11 on it, but they could make it look sort of like Windows 10. Same price as the one the guy quoted earlier. He wanted to earn my business, super salesman said.

I looked at my husband, who shrugged and said it sounded ok to him. I agreed. What else could I do, really? The man said to come back after noon, and it would be ready.

We didn't call. We made the 45-minute drive back because, well, the man said it would be ready. But it was not ready, and we had to be at a funeral, so even though we killed an hour in the city and called again to see if it was ready, we found it was not. That left us with no choice but to go to the funeral and pick the computer up on Saturday.

Only I would have to do that by myself, because my husband had other plans. I was not happy with any of this. I hadn't wanted to leave the computer overnight. I was worried about my passwords being on the computer hard drive. I also didn't want to go into the store by myself. It was obviously a very male sort of place and women who went in there weren't supposed to know anything about computers except how to turn them on and play solitaire, and maybe use Word.

But I went and got the thing. A nice young man hooked up the computer and quickly showed me what it looked like. I asked a few questions - did I have full administrator privileges, for example. And then I mentioned my issue with the video card and Skyrim. He said it should run Skyrim. I said it never would and I doubted it would. He said to try turning down the graphics, like I hadn't already thought of that.

Anyway, I brought it home. After I downloaded Norton and reinstalled that to ensure my computer was safe, I spent 3 hours changing passwords. Most things require two-factor authentication so I was getting text messages left and right while I was trying to remember what sites would be the most dangerous to have someone get into.

Several of the programs ended up in a folder called "programs you need to reinstall." They were mostly old programs. I can't get the old MS Outlook 2003 calendar program that I prefer to work, but the MS Outlook 2007 program they installed on the computer is something I can adapt too, aside from all the birthdays and anniversaries I have now lost. iTunes appeared to have been lost forever but suddenly tonight Apple did an update and it seems to be working, although everything I had there is gone. Finding my pictures has been a trial, but they are there. Just not where I had thought they would be.

Next time I will do what I wanted to do in the first place. I will buy a new computer and start fresh, or just let them put in a new hard drive with Windows and give me back my hard drive. I back up my documents and photos every 30 minutes to an external hard drive, and installing programs is time consuming but doable. (Note: Windows 11 doesn't have an external hard drive backup app, you have to go around in circles to get that done. I've watched a video on it but haven't set it up yet, which is fine because I haven't done much, except the calendar, that requires any saving.)

I think this has been just as time consuming as setting one up anew, and it's not set up like I would have set it up. It took a long time just to get the desktop to look like something I wanted to look at. This may have been the cheaper route, but I'm not at all convinced it was the better one.