Saturday, October 15, 2005

Have you ever wanted to throw a computer out of the window??

One of the neat parts of my role here is looking after the computer lab. Ever since my first computer of Christmas grade 8 one of my favorite things is to take the computers apart. So in computer class we sometimes take the computers apart. The problem is some of them are just barely hanging in there, that was the problem today.

Senerio: We have 9 computers, 6 work well and 3 are almost dead. I need to reformat the 3 to make them work better but if I start I'm not sure it will work out since I don't have the original disks for all the parts.

Blessing: One of the parents just gave me two of their old computers. One is actually a 500mhz computer (fairly decent) but when I turned it on the hard-drive was dead. No big deal I have an extra drive from a dead computer (but no OS yet). The other one is a 166MHZ and surprising I just plugged it in and it worked.

Process: So I decided to back up all the computers by making an image of each drive so if I mess up or something goes wrong (like the power going off twice a day and corrupting the system) I have something to go back to. I backup up the new 166mhz system and then formated the drive to test it. When I restored it the computer no longer accepted the drive. Nuts! So I stuck it in another computer and the drive actually loaded (until it froze b/c the hardware was so different). Then I took that computer drive and stuck it in the 166 and it loaded which means the cables and all are working. That's good. But when I put the other drive back that computer did not work now. Oh oh! Several hours later I still haven't figured it out, I'm hoping that when I come back in the morning it will work. So the drive works and the cables work but they don't work in the computer.

Solution: None known yet. But we have 7 working computers and 3 temperarily disabled ones.

Prayer Request: Pray I can get the computers working again and not lose too much hair in the process.

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