grrrr update – the Cylons have been repulsed

Well, I managed to get the mothership working again.  For the time being the Cylons have been repulsed.

We shall see, but so far so good.

I did this through several steps. 

Unseating and reseating my video card got me in long enough to initiate a backup of the computer to an external drive.

Then I had to go through the process of reseating again when I found the computer had screwed up again the next morning…. yes, it was a video driver problem, rather than hardware.  It was a pesky file called nvlddmkm.sys, a file name that will be forever by me hated.

But I disgress… the backup was complete to the external hard drive.

Then I showed the computer my shotgun, and – after a long menacing glare – initiated a restore to the factory settings.

That worked.  I have begun the laborious process of reinstalling apps, etc.

The computer has decided to cooperate.  Right now, pace Cylons, everything is working.

I have turned off the automatic updating features from the central Cylon colony, btw.  They will eventually screw your computer up.

On that note, I must send out public thanks to the kind soul, JM of VA, who used the Amazon wish list to send me the final set of DVDs of Battlestar Galactica, thus inspiring the imagery of this entry.

I appreciate also most of the suggestions that came in other update entries.

I am still working to resolve the loss of the use of Picture Manager, which is handy for work on the blog.

Also, for some reason or another the Backup function can’t yet spot the backup "shadow" I made the external hard drive.

But… brick by brick.

About Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Fr. Z is the guy who runs this blog. o{]:¬)
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8 Comments

  1. glennbcnu says:

    Glad to hear that things are coming together with your restore.

  2. glennbcnu: Not everything is completed, but so far everything is working… knock wood.

  3. Trevor says:

    “Automatic updating features from the central Cylon colony…”

    Hehe…

  4. Tina in Ashburn says:

    Glad to hear it Father. and the details interest me, you just never know when the same will happen to the rest of us.

    Not that our computer system could be a NASA control center like yours seems to be…

    I’ll have to remember the shotgun tip.

  5. ALL: Just remember!

    Jesus Saves. So should you.

    Definitely get into the habit of creating regular backups.

    It is not a matter of if, but a matter of when your system will crash.

  6. Manrique Zabala de Arizona says:

    I hate those frakkin’ toasters ;)

  7. Odd that reseating the video card did anything to help.

    It looks like nvlddmkm.sys causes a lot of problems for a lot of nvidia users.

  8. MatthewS: Odd, but it did. I wonder if the card itself had some sort of memory screwup and, unseating it, allowed it to dump whatever it had, etc. I don’t know. But it worked long enough for me to get in and initiate some other procedures.

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