OK, when I had to deal with this yet again on starting my laptop this morning, I decided to say something. Like Bull Randleman in “Band of Brothers.” Enough is enough.
I see the above blue screen — or another one like it that politely asks (actually, demands) that I restart, instead of going ahead and doing it — pretty much daily, maybe more. This started about the time Microsoft 11 was released, or a little after.
At one point, my computer kept asking me to “upgrade” to it for free, but of course, since I knew of no reason to do so, I did not, but went on with life. I did this because I did not wish to take the time, and also because I’ve noticed something in recent years about “upgrades” from the various technology companies I deal with — Microsoft, of course Apple, Facebook, Google, what have you (oh, and did I mention Apple, a company that increasingly seems to exist purely to do this sort of thing?) — don’t do “upgrades” to improve the product for the user. They do them for their own arcane reasons (probably to make more money, but also possibly out of sheer cussedness), and if they can make my life less convenient along the way, this seems to please them as well.
I became even less interested when I went shopping with my daughter — the one who lives on an island where you can’t just go out and buy a computer, and the shipping costs of ordering one are prohibitive — to help her buy a new laptop. All the PCs were on 11, and the salesman told us some disturbing things about 11. He said you could avoid the problems with some of the machines they had — something about their different configurations — but not with others. I forget now what the biggest problem was; I only remember that it was one that would have interfered hugely with the ways I use a PC.
Anyway, we got one on which the big problem wasn’t supposed to be a problem, and I ran into a smaller one when I spent time setting it up for her after we got home. (This was a tedious process since she and I had both just been diagnosed with COVID and we were in separate rooms and everything I did on her laptop meant a bunch of wiping down with disinfecting wipes before transferring it back to where she was.)
Of course, one of the first things I did was download Chrome and get it running for her. I mean, you know, it’s either that or Firefox, and I prefer Chrome. I’ve got a new problem with Chrome that I might write about separately, but mostly it’s been great. Whereas I have yet to see a good argument presented for why anyone (anyone who was not forced to) would use Edge or its unlamented ancestor, Explorer.
At every step, Microsoft 11 tried to stop me, insisting that I really, really wanted to use Edge. Except, you see, I didn’t. And if Microsoft offered me any reasons I should change my mind, I don’t recall them.
So, another strike against 11.
But ever since I declined to switch my perfectly serviceable laptop over to it, I’ve been getting these blue screens. That’s when it started. And for this, I blame the existence of 11 in the world, but I could be wrong. I just can’t think of anything else that’s changed.
Anybody know how I can fix this? I mean, by spending less time than I spent typing this, which was, as it turns out, much more time than I wanted to?
If so, I would appreciate it. Oh, and yeah — I see the blue screen offers a URL where I can go explore multiple things that might be wrong, and spend the rest of a day messing with them. I did, and stared at it for a couple of seconds. But I just want it to stop.
Or maybe I just wanted to say something, as did Bull. But unfortunately, Lt. Sobel — I mean Microsoft — hates us all…
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OK, I got that out of my system for the time being, so I feel better. Until the next time it happens, which will probably be within the next 24 hours…
It depends what features are important to you but chromebook are fast easy no screens
Yeah, I don’t know. I just know that I tend to have a lot of things running at once, for work and other purposes. And while I’m a heavy user of my iPad, there are many, many things I just can’t do efficiently on that — I need the PC.
I don’t know much about chromebooks. Who knows? It may be late for an old dog like me to switch over, even if they do have the functionality I need.
I started with PCs in the early 90s, and long ago got to where I do most routine things without thinking — my fingers just get the job done. I have an ADCO mac laptop here in my home office, but haven’t used it in a long time now. It’s just too hard. I try to do something simple on it like write in a Word file, and there are enough keys and functions in the wrong places that I spend more than half my time having to back over and correct errors that wouldn’t have been errors if I had been on my PC.
It’s tough to switch…