(the following post contains more technical bs than we usually have in here. Read at your own risk. I just need to vent, OK?)

Ya'd think with a new computer there wouldn't be any problems? WRONG!!

1. for the second time in three weeks, earthlink completely torched my email. When I went to Arizona, my email was jettisoned into cyberspace for 5 days. This past weekend it happened for 2 days. Furthermore, all email more than 4 weeks old was blown into itsy bitsy cyber shards. Earthlink PROMISES it won't happen again. Sure In the meantime I had to go into my website and change the email on all my links. Unfortunately, I couldn't check the links without logging into earthlink dial-up (I also have yahoo DSL.) Right now I am very very unhappy with earthlink. As in VERY. It took 3 separate calls to Customer Support before my account was reactivated. No one knows why this happened, or if they know they're not telling me.

2. With this in mind, I thought it would be a really good time to export/import my earthlink address book, just in case earthlink decided to doing something stupid again. I followed directions to a T. I saved CSV documents. Names were imported; email addresses weren't. I tried importing into outlook express, hotmail and yahoo. NADA NADA NADA. I emailed tech support at all four mail programs. Basically they told me everything that I had already done (except for microsoft/outlook, which told me nothing), which didn't work either time. I called all those tech supports, only to be walked through more steps that didn't work. Total time spent: maybe 6-7 hours, including listening to pre-tech-help muzak. So I gave up. I copied my address book manually into yahoo for 3 hours. I'm halfway done.

3. As per recent posts, I finally gave up playing SCSI card tech help ping pong (total # of emails generated both ways: 23.) I bought a new scanner. Some of the software features don't work. I sent an email which got the reply: "gee this is a tough one. I'll get back to you in a few days, after I do some research." Four days later, I got another reply: "gee this is REALLY tough. Can we call you?" I need to set up a time. No problem.

4. Plus earthlink hijacked outlook express. I can't use outlook unless I sign into earthlink dial-up. Several hours more chatting with my newest and bestest friends in tech support over this one. No solution, except one (yahoo actually turfed my phone session through THREE!! different tech people for this baby!) techie suggested that since I have yahoo, why don't I just purge all traces of earthlink from my computer? I suspect that this was an impromptu suggestion and not in any of their customer help manuals.

5. Furthermore, the hotmail icon on my desktop has been hijacked by outlook express. Don't ask. I can only access my hotmail account through an existing open web window.

-----------------------------------
Since Saturday night, I've been at this computer 12 hours a day trying to fix these problems. I've read more FAQs and help topics than anyone should have to. I've read more 7-page technical articles on you-name-it than anyone except a hard-core techie would want to. I've gone into forums with people who write software for kicks and played 8 billion games of free cell while wading through phone menus and waiting for live help. I've had it, I've had it and I've had it.

Is there an icon for screaming??

BTW, you can email me at
meredkl-web@yahoo.com
In a few days when this all calms down, I'll change it however it's supposed to be done here. May or may not be the same address but this one will work for now.

Yeeks! More than your share of computer ills!

COMPUTERS.....the ULTIMATE Love/Hate relationship!!!!

ya know Ms M...I know everybody hates AOL, but I've had them since conception and it could all fall apart tomorrow, but knock on wood, for 14.00/month I've never had a prob....

I would be sooooo dang mad if I were in your shoes.

JJ

I pay $21.95 to MSN but have had then now for a couple of years and except for a virus that was something I never should have opened, I have had nothing but good service and never am down. I am very satisfied and consider myself lucky from all the awful stuff I hear from other people. I hope you get things straightened our Meredith, it is such a bummer.

I've had earthlink for 3 or 4 years and had NO problems whatsoever, but 7 days of lost emails due to incorrect account inactivation twice in 3 weeks??? That's why I'm transferring all my email over to yahoo, and when my earthlink contract expires in 5 months I will totally purge it from my computer. It ain't the money: it's the headaches.

And just when I thought it was safe to come out and play:

6. My hard drive crashed BLACK screen, no nothing. This computer is only two months old!! I called Dell tech support which walked me through over one hour of trouble shooting. Conclusion: hard drive was irreparably deceased. The good news is, the computer is still under warranty. Dell sent someone out 36 hours later to install a new hard drive.

And the (more) bad news is:

7. Three hours after the new hard drive was installed, I tried to make a phone call and all the phones were down. When I tried to call my # from a neighbor's, I got a busy signal. Phone company customer service was closed for the day. It took two hours from that time for my husband and I to figure out that the tech guy reinstalled our phone line into the USB port instead of the modem port on the tower. That's 5 hours of busy signals if anyone was trying to call us.

The past few days, I've had a wonderful time reinstalling programs, setting up browser preferences, etc.

This new computer was supposed to make life easier...

Oh my gosh Meredith.

What a mess. You have my sympathy. My computer is still not completely well and it makes me insane when it goes black. It's like someone died. ME!

A couple of years ago I was using my laptop to edit a documentary and the huge heavy battery off the camera fell onto my laptop. Needless to say it crashed everything most of which was not backed up. I said, "That's my heart." And it was. I went to bed, sick.
Once when I he over heard me telling my daughter I had a broken heart, my grandson said, "Gma, if you have a broken heart, just tell God and he'll give you a new heart."
I hung onto those words when my computer crashed and I lost so many things I had written from my heart. After I remembered my grandson's words, I I crawled out of bed and started writing. And just like my grandson said, I wrote a whole new heart.
You can too Meredith, though hopefully you're smarter than I am and have everything backed up.
smile

[ October 18, 2004, 10:51 PM: Message edited by: smilinize ]