DIARY OF A PC CRASH --
(Happy ending. No tekkie required!)

My PC crashed. TEN TIMES it didn't work, its entire guts were jammed or frozen but the eleventh boot was the charm, thank GAWD! Whatever this no knowledge lady did, It worked! This thing started with a total freeze, jam, blue screen horror the kind where there's suddenly no way to get MSoffice/office97 to work. The software makes a box at bottom of screen as if file were open. The clickable icon sez "word document" but it won't open. ON THE SCREEN where you need it to write the file. NOTHING. I play with things and get a crash blue screen. To me those are common place. They don't faze me. I rebooted, slid quickly into safe mode. I thought I'd give it my password from my website. I did it in safemode, gave it new password. It wanted to know the old one. I HAVE NO IDEA! I just wrote anything, then exited. I haven't the faintest idea what password was there earlier. (I was given this old PC, a 95 vintage 166 mgahrtz model built in Massachusetts, 3,000 miles away for a friend. She fedexed it to me, I have no idea what password was built into it but then when Phone company asks me my password, set up the month before, I can't remember it.) Does anyone know how does one go inside in all a PC's password areas and change all the passwords in it? to be my own? ONE SINGLE password like my bank account and ATM have? A life where all accts have the same damn password to make life easy? Somewhere the old owner has password stuff there with names like "kashmere lady" certainly not my passwords. WHERE IS this junk stored? HERE IS ANSWER: ANITA,  You asked:  Does anyone know how does one go inside in all a PC's password areas and change all the passwords in it? to be my own? To open User Accounts, click Start, click Control Panel, and then click User Accounts.    A user with a computer administrator account can create and change passwords, and create password hints for all users. Users with limited accounts can create and change their own passwords, as well as create their own password hints.    If a user with a computer administrator account changes the password for another user, that user will lose all personal certificates, and stored passwords for Web sites or network resources.    When you create a password hint, anyone who uses the computer will be able to see the hint on the Welcome screen.

THANK YOU. NOw another thing: I reboot still can't get winword.exe 97 to work. I am undaunted. GROWLING, I place the Microsoft Office PROFESSIONAL 97 version of  winword.exe DISC in the E DRIVE and I punch those buttons and go into MY COMPUTER and into CHOICES there. I say un-install. The machine answers me "put in disc!" I DO. I repeat UNINSTALL! Reinstall! Whatever. Uninstall reinstall word exe 97 ! I'm specific. I'm on that line, right in all the programs i'm standing on the one i want re-fucking-installed.

The spunky nutcase computer answers "I cannot find E drive. I curse. No way the machine can find its own E? the cd rom? SCREW THIS! I reboot. THEN to my horror I find I'm punished for my hysteria. I'm sort of crashed on other levels TOO! Microsoft winword l997 exe wasn't ALL that won't work. OTHER things are jamming.
I  am so crazed I REBOOT. I let it digest its own vomit. It's up. I see my desktop. I right click on winwordexe.97 ICON, its properties are  or seem to be perfectly allright. But nothing. THE LANDSCAPE IS FROZEN! OK, I'm LEO rising. We never give up. We bombard things with FIRE I again try to reinstall from the REAL GUERILLA BLACK PIRATED FREEWARE Disc of winword 97 professional that GATES doesn't
know exists. Still machine tells me it can't find its' own f'in E drive. How can it not find its own E? It couldn't find its ass in a typhoon is how!

I'm snarling. I'm talking to the machine! "YOU HAVE AN Ffin' E DRIVE. Don't tell me you don't! THE CD ROM PLAYER WORKS f'n FINE see? When I put music in I can hear it! That's the f'in E DRIVE!!!! "
I try to get the WINWORD to work. The machine  freezes. So I reboot. This time again, nothing moves. I stare at the blue, pretty background, the icons are there staring back but nothing is alive. it's staring at me frozen. I REBOOT again. I mean this time I'm losing it, you can't get a frozen machine to turn off so I just unplug the fucker. Reboot it.  NOW it goes thru a lengthy reassembling of itself from its secret files, probably what's called the REGISTRY, right?  What I call digesting its own vomit. It does it with a peeved air of how dare you make me do this. Like a raped nun putting her clothing back on in a total snit.

But nuns are Nuns and PC's are just robotic enough to restore order at times. And THIS TIME it reboots and it works. EVEN MIKE EXEC VERSION PROFESSION WINWORD 97 EXE works! Go fuckin figure! I have never ever seen a pc that does the same thing every time ! They all pull fast ones. on every single move in the deck. NOTHING is ever by Hoyle, nothing is ever by the book so I KNOW there is intelligent, malevolent LIFE inside 'em! (A tekkie informs me " Newer versions have an auto restore feature, that is your PC auto takes a picture of itself at frequent intervals then all you have to do is pick out a date and click on restore. " YEAH if you know how to just 'click' on restore. He didn't tell me that!"

Whenever I go thru an hour like that, where your blood freezes in your veins, I immediately close down all the little tiny icons on lower right hand corner side, whatever is running, virus, zonealarm, dayrunner and I get
it down to bare basics then I do a full CLEAN UP, and after all temp files are gone I do a "scan & defrag" on that C drive! You know how to do that, right? It's off the START button at lower left hand side on task bar. Hit it. Then hit RUN. And then do scandisk first. After that's done and it takes an hour, do it to C drive obviously, then do defrag. Another hour. So you get to watch TV for a while, go for a walk, plant a salad bed, fool around with your sweetie, read a kid a Dr. Seuss book.

The thing is about us adults, is we often need to scan and defrag ourselves, --- our own brains. What can we do it with? A swim at the Y? Walk in in the rain? GIN?  Hey, I feel bigtime entitled! Maybe to a little sip of single malt whiskey in some apple juice while I soak in a very hot tub listening to Lucho Gatica tapes. Julio in a pinch.   If  I didn't have to type a mother huge file for my FREE STARS for the WEEK AHEAD list  tonight, an audience that doesn't appreciate their astrologer sloshed, I'd drink it. I'd seriously tilt one!

But I cannot. I need that office97 for a reason. So after scan and defrag I gotta cold sober, finish the writing. Blood turned to jello and all! BUT FIRST. I feel we should all get the remedy for a MINOR glitch, you cannot 'see' certain pages that you uaully see, this happened to me. Could not GO to my own website. Pal told me to hit START button then pick RUN which gives you ability to do a DOS command. Do: ipconfig space flushdns Only after I did it and nothing happened, I sent the password back to him, he said "Not quite. There's a slash in there:
ipconfig [space] /flushdnscrash But what do you do for a big crash?  The PC itself is unstable.

The following remedy was sent me by the same tekkie pal. I retrieved it after all was said and done. I knew that he had a quick remedy to fix a crash when you have the blue screen or those no dll file error messages. Right now, write this (below,) on a piece of paper, glue it to side of the PC cuz you sure can't remember the magic words when the blue screen of death hits! Cuz your blood turns to JELLO!

HOW TO RECONFIGURE YOUR WINDOWS

An 'easy out' in a crash is to restore the Backup- which fixes the problem. JOT this on paper so that you can recover easily next time your PCs get 'conflicted'.

TO RESTORE BACK UP you have to instruct your machine
to have a copy of backup. Do this NOW, while your PCs are still OK.
PRETEND YOU ARE CRASHED! Blood turned to jello. Now you
have this little interior instruction which makes restoration possible.
WRitten both on paper and inside the machine.

REBOOT FIRST! So that files are all in order when you do the backup.
Go to START BUTTON lower left hand side

HIT "RUN". Type in the box: "msconfig". Then, hit ENTER
You will see a screen and a menu. Click on "Create Backup" or type it in
if it isn't there.... then hit <ENTER>

PC will instantly back up your current configuration.
That's all there is to it. Exit msconfig and do the same thing to
any other PC.

Later, when some conflict starts giving you trouble, Blue Screen of
Death- DLL errors, etc. Remember that you have Backed Up a good copy of
PC Configuration in "msconfig".

When you get to the 'hair pulling out stage', simply RUN: msconfig
again, only this time CLICK: Restore Backup! not CREATE backup.

Then the msconfig utility will restore your PC to work like it does
today. Instantly. Reboot and all should be OK.

If you fail to do this you are just setting yourself up for needless
expense and frustration later, when the inevitable CONFLICT occurs.

This is not a 100% SURE CURE, but it works more often than not. You may
need to back track and remove whatever program CAUSED the conflict, if
the conflict reappears. This (usually!) works in cases when the "Go Back"
command does NOT work. But it only works when you have CREATED a BACKUP
to go back to.

So do it NOW, have no fear, nothing can go wrong by doing this. This is
simple and foolproof insurance. Save you driving across the city with
a dead PC at one in the morning banging on some tekkie's door!

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