Loss of a Good Friend

Mom lost a good friend today: her desktop computer. Highlander was about 3 years old but had been ill for about a year. He had suffered a variety of ailments that he survived with careful nursing and software updates but to no avail. I had called my sister, Paula, earlier in the week and she came to help me with one last ditch effort to save him.

For about a year or so Windows updates had been hanging up on installation and had to be manually installed. Highlander just simply refused to shut down upon occasion or took his sweet time in doing so. The biggest problem we had was his refusal to even recognize the wireless network. This is why I asked my sister to take a look. He simply refused to listen to me. We checked all his settings, reconfigured the network and even ran the wizard to set up a new connection. We decided on radical treatment. Paula and I took an old G router left over (after upgrading to the N router) and “hotwired” it into the N router. Configured the G router to broadcast as a relay and hooked it into the network via the web. Still Highlander did not respond. I had a range expander that I thought might do the trick. We plugged in the expander and linked it to the G router that was linked into the N router. Success! Highlander proudly announced he was now connected to the network at 54mps and signal strength was Excellent! Having dealt with a terminal patient before, I recognized this as the last rally of lucidity before lapsing into an unconscious state. We still had to try. Paula opened Internet Explorer and tried to connect to the internet but the page would not open. Seconds later a message popped up stating the connection had been lost. Paula, not willing to give up yet, re-checked all the settings again. I only had one more idea left before we pulled the plug.

I went upstairs and found the software for a wireless access point, the access point and two 10 foot USB cables. I strung the cables together and made a 26 foot connection to Highlander. My hope was that by moving the access point closer to the router Highlander would be able to connect to the internet. Paula plugged in the adapter into the port. Nothing happened. No message that new hard had been found and the wizard was completely silent. Ok, we can just put the disc in and load the software. The drive started up and the program started to load then with a flicker it was gone. We made several more attempts and even tried to load the program manually. Drive failure was Highlander last gasp and we both knew it. After 4 ½ hours all we could do was make him comfortable. I wanted to draw straws to see who was going to tell Mom but Paula said we should tell her together.
We carefully removed the life lines to the printer, scanner and web cam and prepared him for autopsy and data retrieval. Mom was just too upset to watch and finally went in the other room and booted up her laptop. We gently placed Highlander in the backseat of Paulas car and she left to put him to rest. She hopes to save some of the pictures on the drive Mom had not backed up on CD.

I went in to consol Mom. She decided she would like to have another desktop just like Highlander. We talked about XP being replaced with Vista which upset her a bit. I suggested trying a MAC. She knows her way around a PC and is not too happy about learning a new OS. After explaining that Pentium D had been replaced with Core duo or Athlon64 and either would be a faster processor she perked up a lot. I brought up the HP web site and configured a multimedia model that was comparable to Highlander. The ads for Bestbuy and Circuit City would be out tomorrow and we can look at those as well. Just to cheer her up, I went to Apple.com and played the guided tour for the new IPOD touch. Her only comment was …”I think I need one of those. Do they have them at Circuit City too?” She is feeling better now.