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mellowtiggerI'm having a string of bad luck with technology. :(
My UPS finally gave out several months ago. Rather than purchase another environmentally UNfriendly battery backup, I chose instead to buy a simple surge suppressor. All went well until this holiday weekend when the kitten pounced after something and landed on the power button of the surge suppressor. The power flickered off/on, and I was no longer able to boot my computer. A Windows repair install was unable to fix the problem. I ran memtest (http://memtest.org/) for 2.5 hours before canceling and proceeding with a full Windows reinstall. That worked. I could boot into Windows 7 again. Now to reinstall all my software yet again.
Intending to avoid the same problem again, I took my UPS to BatteriesPlus to get the cells replaced. Once the tech had the UPS opened, however, he discovered that this old Belkin UPS apparently was intended as a disposable product. There was no easy way to replace the cells. I was watching him with it, and I agreed. Even after removing the circuit board, they allowed no room on the many attached wires for him to pull the board out of the way. It was going to take a long time to replace the cells, and he would need to charge me for time used on the replacement. So I gave up and had him just recycle the whole thing. I'll do online research later to find a good UPS replacement.
Meanwhile, my Windows 7 install froze up again. Not sure what happened, but I lost all of my BIOS settings after rebooting. I think I forgot one of the settings, though, because now Windows 7 is complaining about not having a USB device driver. I hope I didn't fry something on my motherboard during the power flicker.
My UPS finally gave out several months ago. Rather than purchase another environmentally UNfriendly battery backup, I chose instead to buy a simple surge suppressor. All went well until this holiday weekend when the kitten pounced after something and landed on the power button of the surge suppressor. The power flickered off/on, and I was no longer able to boot my computer. A Windows repair install was unable to fix the problem. I ran memtest (http://memtest.org/) for 2.5 hours before canceling and proceeding with a full Windows reinstall. That worked. I could boot into Windows 7 again. Now to reinstall all my software yet again.
Intending to avoid the same problem again, I took my UPS to BatteriesPlus to get the cells replaced. Once the tech had the UPS opened, however, he discovered that this old Belkin UPS apparently was intended as a disposable product. There was no easy way to replace the cells. I was watching him with it, and I agreed. Even after removing the circuit board, they allowed no room on the many attached wires for him to pull the board out of the way. It was going to take a long time to replace the cells, and he would need to charge me for time used on the replacement. So I gave up and had him just recycle the whole thing. I'll do online research later to find a good UPS replacement.
Meanwhile, my Windows 7 install froze up again. Not sure what happened, but I lost all of my BIOS settings after rebooting. I think I forgot one of the settings, though, because now Windows 7 is complaining about not having a USB device driver. I hope I didn't fry something on my motherboard during the power flicker.
:)
Date: 2010-Dec-28, Tuesday 05:53 am (UTC)