Technical Support

I am making a promise to myself. From now on, I will post everything I discover along the way in my technical troubleshooting journeys.

I started with PCs back in 1988, where the OS of the day was MS-DOS (3.3?), when the only people who owned PCs were Geeks (& Geekettes). I recall installing my first 3.5 floopy drive, & playing with my 2400 baud modem, when the internet consisted of PC Link (& everything was text & the main users were bored Radio Shack employees, & the phone bill was outrageous! The closest server was in Atlanta, GA, I was in Florida). I recall being excited that my first IBM compatible 386 had a hard drive, so I was no longer bound to using 5 1/4 in floppies (in my Commodore 64). I recall my first ink jet printer (HP), & how I didn't have to set the dip switches like I did on my Star printer so it could talk to the C-64.

I took a long break from the geeky PC world to raise 4 children, but after 10 yrs or so, found myself missing my favorite hobby. After much pestering, I talked my at-the-time spouse into buying a new system. We settled on a Dell XPST-450 w/ Windows 98, and I was hooked once again. Oh, & it was wonderful! Zip drives, 13G HD (which seemed like a LOT at the time), and WOW! the internet was so rich, & full of information! In no time I was a top contributor at Win 98 forums, loved to IM, and was creating web pages & learning HTML, JavaScript, & CSS. I loved it so much I decided to get back into the field & leave my boring days as a housewife behind.

Along my journey back into the PC world, I made a lot of neat discoveries & fixed a lot of PC problems. My faves were fixes that involved DOS (which I was well-versed in and came in useful with 98), and unique things I discovered about dual-boot configurations (98/RedHat, 98/2000, 2000/RedHat). I wished I had made these gems available to the world in the event that they may help others understand PCs, and make their experience into this wonderful world more enjoyable.

Well, now with the advent of blogs, I have no excuse. So, any little thing I discover, I will post. My work laptop is an IBM T series running XP Pro, my home desktop system a Dell XPST600 running Windows XP Pro, and my personal laptop a Sony Vaio CR series running Vista Home Premium...so I have a lot to explore! :O) (I'll have even more when I start messing w/ Linux again).

Look for more technical posts in the future!