Day 1
Thor had a tremendous passion for TV series of all kinds. What he wanted to do was to run Kazaa on his laptop and download TV series that way. But the problem was that he had a dial-up internet connection, so if he stayed online for a long time the telephone line would remain busy for that long and that was not an acceptable option. And he had to stay online for a long time because TV series were large files and took a long time to download. But he came across a solution. While he was tidying up his desk one day, he came across a promotional leaflet about a broadband connection provider. This leaflet had come as a newspaper insert one morning and he had put it away for later consideration and with time it had been buried under other papers on his desk. Coming across this leaflet this way at a time when his yearning for downloading TV series had a reached one of its occasional highs, the superstitious part of his mind whispered that this was divine intervention and he should act on it immediately. This he did the next day and the broadband service providers were just as prompt, coming over to his house on that very day and connecting him up. As soon as the providers had left, Thor had logged into Kazaa. Within minutes, he was downloading Sienfeld episodes. At the same time he was downloading Adware and Virus Killers. The providers had warned him about broadband vulnerability to virus and spyware and he began to feel very pleased with himself after he had run these programs and eliminated nearly a hundred worms, Trojans, spyware, all from Kazaa logged in for less than 2 hours. Anyone else less infatuated with Kazaa would have second thoughts on using Kazaa. But Thor went to bed a very happy man.
Laptop Battery Day 2
The next morning he was once again logged in. But after some time Kazaa became disconnected and for that whole day it would not connect. He was very disappointed and began to have suspicions that the provider had blocked his access to Kazaa because he was using up so much of the bandwidth. But then again, he thought, can they really pin down one computer and block that computer from access? He thought of calling the provider. But he remembered how Kazaa had become disconnected the previous day and had stayed that way for some and then connected again. So he decided to wait. In the meantime he emailed the provider with his question. He went to bed that night not at all the happy man he had been the previous night.
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Thinkpad Day 3 - a long day.
Trouble started the next day. He turned on his laptop and it began to act in strange ways. He restarted the laptop and it asked for a password. The laptop logged in without a password but it should never have asked for a password. Thor began to feel very scared and it showed on his face. He had a virus on his computer. The virus killers that had made him feel so secure earlier had not saved him. He tried a system restore which would restore Windows to an earlier state, hoping that this would flush out the virus. But this did not work. Looks of different screens began to change by themselves and the screen asking for a password began to appear. System restore would not work. How about the product recovery CDs? Would they fix the problems?
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Microsoft Thor inserted one of the product recovery CDs in the disk drive. A screen came up asking for the computer's model name. Thor had never seen this happen before. He tried to enter the model name, Portege 4010, but he could not and the screen came up again and he failed again and this time there was a warning that there was only one more chance. Thor did not want to think what would happen if that one chance was wasted. Desperate to get out of this loop and save that one chance, he went for emergency shutdown.
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Laptop Computers By this time Thor was not sweating only because the electrical fan above was doing a good job, unlike the laptop. He tried several methods of somehow accessing BIOS, thinking that maybe he could enter the model name through BIOS. He could not access BIOS. By this time he had begun to think of wiping the hard disk and going for a new installation of Windows XP. But there was a large collection of music on his laptop and he would not have this collection deleted even at gunpoint, which he was now, held at gunpoint by a virus. He began to think of how to save this collection. His thoughts turned to the desktop. Unfortunately this Desktop was an ancient model from a time when USB ports were still not in vogue. So there were no easy ways of transferring files from the laptop to the desktop. But it was not impossible. He had a solution.
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Laptop Computer Thor liked to watch DVDs on his laptop. But when he ran these DVDs on his laptop, it heated up and vibrated terribly and this scared him. So he hit upon the idea of buying an external DVD-ROM and playing it through USB. This external DVD-ROM drive came with an external enclosure which made the external DVD-ROM drive compatible with USB technology. The external enclosure also made hard disks compatible with USB technology. Thor thought he could make use of this now. It was going to be a difficult process. He would have to take the hard disk out of the desktop. He would have to take the DVD-ROM drive out of the external enclosure. He would have to put the hard disk into the external enclosure. He would have to put everything back as they were before. A million things might go wrong before he reached that point, if he ever reached that point. But choices he did not have and he set to work.
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Desktop Computer Freeing the DVD-ROM drive from the external enclosure required considerable muscular effort. There were two connections and Thor was praying all the time that he was straining and pulling that something would not tear or break. One connection suddenly came off and his hand pulled back so violently that the other connection freed as well with the force of the pull. The DVD-ROM was free and everything looked OK. So now he put the hard disk in and put in the connections, taking care to push them in only lightly, so he would not have to repeat all the straining and pulling when he put things back the way they were before. Hard disk all wired up inside the external enclosure, he switched on the external enclosure and connected it to the laptop through the USB port. He could see the three drives of the hard disk on his laptop and this little success was a badly needed ray of sunshine for Thor. He began to transfer files from the laptop to the hard disk. File transfer complete, Thor began the process of installing Windows. What happened in the next minute left him breathing only incompletely. The laptop reported that this was a wrong machine and installation could not continue. The virus had deleted model name and the laptop had locked down.
Notebooks Thor needed to calm his nerves. He prepared a mug of coffee and began to watch Star Trek. But his mind was only partially on Star Trek as he considered possible solutions. The first solution was of course to go to the authorized Toshiba dealer and seek their counsel. But a horrible thought occurred to him that once model name was deleted, it could not be reentered and that some piece of hardware would have to be replaced and he would of course have to pay full price, since warranty had expired. What if the dealer seized the laptop because it was no longer a legal Toshiba product and thus had to be withdrawn from circulation? Clearly he would have to think more deeply before he acted on this solution. The model name had been deleted and he also could not access the Internet with his laptop, but otherwise it ran okay. He could listen to music, watch DVDs, use all the office applications. May be the virus only stripped the laptop of its legal status and that was the extent of its power. If so, then why re-install windows? And there was no hurry about going to the dealer, because the laptop was already out of warranty, so calling on the dealer a year later was the same as calling on the dealer now. The internet problem was not really a problem, because there was the desktop which he could use to browse the Internet. But before he could do that he would of course have to put the hard disk back into the desktop. What he could do, Thor thought, was to send an email to the Toshiba help & support center and ask their advice. If they advised immediate consultation with the dealer, then that would confirm his worst suspicions and he could think of what steps to take then. To send that email however, he would need the desktop in action and this meant he would have to put the hard disk back in.
Lenovo Thor felt proud of his foresight as without any muscular strain whatsoever, he separated the hard disk from the external enclosure. Before he went ahead with restoring the hard disk, he thought he would restore the DVD-ROM drive first. This he proceeded to do, taking care not to put too much force on the connections, because he might have to take it out again. He connected the external enclosure to the laptop and the laptop would not recognize the DVD-ROM drive. Thor once again felt his nerves under great strain. Had he damaged something while taking out the DVD-ROM earlier? That kind of damage would make the warranty of the DVD-ROM drive void. He switched the external enclosure on and off several times and every time the laptop would acknowledge the existence of a USB device but could not read what device it was. Almost everything was going wrong today. Thor decided to start working on the hard disk instead.
Hard Drive Thor put in the hard disk and connected up the Desktop and switched it on. Unfortunately the connection to the monitor was extremely loose and the monitor would not turn on. Firmly convinced by now that this was a bad day, he only expected problems and went about working on them with a robotic detachment. He made his way to the back of the table on which the desktop system sat and began to move the monitor connection this way and that while leaning over the monitor to see if the power came on. The light came on, but as soon he let the wire go, the power went as well. He was sweating now, the electrical fan not being directly above his head. Once again he started to play with the wire, not enjoying it by any means, and when the monitor power came on, he let go of the wire very slowly and when he finally did let go, the monitor power remained on. Gratefully making his way out of the back of the table, because the temperature conditions in the region had not been favorable, he looked at the monitor to see what it had to say. Quite accustomed to terrible messages by this time, Thor still felt a slight shock: there was a hard disk/primary master slave failure. He hoped it only meant that he had not connected up the hard disk properly.
Travelstar Thor in his hurry had not seen how the hard disk lay when he had taken it out earlier and this he regretted now. He tried this way and that way but the terrible message would not go. The terrible message began to look like a standard message. Thor decided to make the testing conditions a little less inconvenient by placing the CPU on a chair in front of the monitor, so he would not have to go back every time to that terrible place at the back of the table. He kept working, trying different connections. Once there was an additional message that the floppy disk could not be read either. This turned out to be the turning point. Thor began to investigate why this had happened and he had the solution. One of the connections that he had been trying on the hard disk came from the floppy drive. Thor hypothesized that this was the reason behind the hard disk failure. So he began to look for a similar open connection and it was a moment of relief for Thor to find one. It had remained hidden all this time under a jungle of wires. This connection had a very short wire unlike that of the floppy drive. He had immediately seized upon the wire that came from the floppy drive because it lay on top of everything and the actual hard disk wire lay far beneath it all and he had to move past several wires before he could reach that wire. So he connected up the hard disk again and switched it on. The system had another surprise: it beeped twice, terribly loud to Thor's frayed nerves and the monitor remained black. Its power was on.
Gateway Thor would not give up. He had to send that email to Toshiba center that very day, that day being Thursday, so the Toshiba people would have the whole Friday in which to send him a suggestion. But those two beeps were terrible to Thor, because his previous experiences told him that those two beeps followed by a pitch-black monitor meant that the video card was off. Had he moved the video card off its socket while struggling with the hard disk connections rather forcefully? Then he had an idea. May be he had picked the wrong power cord for the hard disk, because there was another power cord lying open. He tried this one and this time Thor simply stood watching as the system booted the right way. He put the CPU back on the table and this time the back of the table did not seem such a bad place as he once again struggled to keep the monitor connection in place.
Laptop Parts Thor was now ready to send that email. But the problem was that the dial-up connection did not have a lot of minutes left and would have to be refilled. Luckily he had bought pre-paid card the previous day. He had once thought of canceling the pre-paid card now that he had the broadband connection. Why depend on the slow-moving dial-up connection any more? Luckily he had decided to maintain the dial-up connection as a fallback plan in case something went wrong with the broadband connection. So now, using the desktop, he logged into the website of the dial-up connection provider and entered his refill ID and PIN number for a refill of 600 minutes, more than enough for sending an email. So Thor successfully sent that email and began to feel quite happy when Toshiba sent an automated reply that his message had been received and that they would get back shortly. Thor turned to the DVD-ROM problem. The thought occurred to him that perhaps the problem was nothing more than loose connections. So he put some pressure on the connections to push them deeper into the ROM-sockets. The power connection did not move. But the other connection moved in deeper and suddenly the laptop knew it had a DVD-ROM drive on one of its USB ports. It had been a stressful day for Thor but it had all been a learning experience for him. He went to bed a happy man.
Software Day 4
The happy man vanished the next morning when checking his emails, Thor found that Toshiba had not sent a reply. This was not like Toshiba. Thor began to think why Toshiba was not replying and he thought that his problem was so serious that Toshiba experts were in deep consultation and still could not find a solution for him. A worse thought occurred to him: perhaps now that his laptop was no longer a Toshiba Portege 4010, because of the deleted model name, Toshiba disclaimed all responsibility. That was not a problem, he thought, because he could always get around the product recovery CDs by purchasing another windows installation and reinstalling windows from there, if the current installation failed. In fact why not do it right now? Then another unsettling thought occurred to him: the laptop used an internal modem which was of Toshiba make. Any other Windows installation might not have the drivers for the Toshiba modem. Thor decided to wait for a reply from Toshiba. Meanwhile the current windows installation was running just fine.
Hard Drives Day 5 - another long day
The next day Toshiba still had not sent a reply. That day Thor checked his emails before breakfast. He could not have breakfast that day. A friend of his mother's had come visiting and Thor did not want to go around preparing his breakfast in front of this visitor. Thor was always very nervous in front of visitors and it put him under a lot of mental strain. He always had fights with his parents about this problem. That day his mother was really furious with him, but he would not go for his breakfast in front of the visitor. Instead he checked his emails. When he saw that Toshiba still had not sent him a reply, he switched off the desktop and sat brooding on his bed, very unhappy over the whole situation with Toshiba and the laptop and the visitor.
Electronics It may have been the state of mind he was in, but Thor decided to do something he had decided never to do earlier: he was going to make use of that one chance left for entering the computer model name. He assumed he had one chance left because he had gone for an emergency shutdown that time and may be the laptop had not yet taken the emergency shutdown into account. Earlier he had decided to save that one chance for the Toshiba dealer, because they would know how to enter the model name. He had visualized the people at the dealer congratulating him on how lucky he was that he still had one chance left, because without that chance they would have no choice but to seize the now illegal piece of hardware and demand that he purchase a replacement. But Thor was not sure about this one chance left. It was entirely possible that the smart laptop had taken the emergency shutdown into consideration as a third failed attempt and had already locked down. Thor decided to put this to the test. Simultaneously Thor had an idea of testing Iris Online at the Toshiba website. Perhaps Iris Online would have a solution for him.
Canon Browsing for Iris Online meant browsing on the desktop. The ancient desktop slowed down the slow dial-up connection and Thor would not just sit there waiting for the desktop and dial-connection to get a move on. He decided to simultaneously test the one-chance-left idea on the laptop. While the desktop was opening the Toshiba website byte by patient byte, Thor slipped product recovery CD 1 into the disk drive of the laptop. In moments the message appeared: the laptop had locked down.
Desktop Pc Thor sat staring at the screen. He was excited: in addition to the lockdown message the product recovery CD had another message for him, an alternative mode of installation using a start-up diskette that the current windows installation would prepare for him. By this time the desktop had loaded the Toshiba website. Thor moved to the desktop and clicked on Iris Online. The desktop loading Iris Online at its leisurely pace, Thor moved back to the laptop. He was ready to try the start-up diskette.
Desktop Computers Unfortunately Thor did not have a functioning floppy disk. For some reason he could never resist the temptation of taking out the floppy disk while the floppy disk light was still on and he had damaged a lot of floppy disks in this brilliant way of his. He thought that may be his sister had some functioning floppies. His sister was not sure: she would have to look. She looked irritated but sympathized with the sense of urgency written all over Thor's face. She finally dug out a couple of floppies and was not sure whether they worked. Thor rushed back to the laptop and put in the floppy and windows started the process of preparing the start-up diskette. Thor moved back to the desktop: Iris Online was asking him to type in a question after selecting his model. The wording of the question was important. He typed in a question, hit 'go' and moved back to the laptop. Windows had a message for him and in keeping with the general state of things, the message was terrible: the start-up diskette could be used on any Protégé 4010 model, but it could not be used on this computer. Thor though that the situation had an element of grim humor in it. Still he thought he would boot the computer with the floppy disk. The terrible message only repeated itself.
Think Pad Thor moved back to the desktop to look at the answers Iris Online had for him. None looked promising. In fact, as far as answers were concerned, Iris Online had hundreds for him. But on this desktop with this dial-up connection, Thor was in no mood to browse beyond the first page. Pages beyond would have topics of less relevance anyway, Thor thought. He decided to try the downloads section instead of Iris Online: perhaps Toshiba would have a utility with which to enter the model name. In the page that loaded, there were many utilities that Thor had no idea about, but one seemed to allow making changes to BIOS. Thor started to download this. Downloading was going to take forever, but it gave Thor time to think about wording a different question to Iris Online. He thought of saying 'model name is deleted' and tried this. The first page was no hope. With nothing better to do, he decided to go to the second page of answers. Here he found something that startled him: it seemed to offer a utility with which to eliminate the 'wrong machine' message when loading Windows with the product recovery CDs. This was exactly what Thor was looking for. He immediately started downloading this utility and canceled the other download. In him was a mixture of hope and possible disappointment. It seemed to make him feel weak and he remembered that he had had nothing to eat that day. Fortunately, his mother and her friend had moved into the living room and he could have his lunch in peace in the dining room.
Repair Back from his excitedly hurried but unfinished lunch, he saw that the download still had a long way to go. But Thor was going to stay with it even if that took forever. The telephone would remain busy all that time. Suppose his dad tried to ring while the download was on? His dad had already more than once expressed his disapproval of keeping the telephone busy with the Internet. But to Thor nothing mattered except downloading that utility. In the meantime he had to take it easy and he began to watch a DVD on his laptop.
Data Recovery The download ended. With a floppy, he transferred the utility from the desktop to the laptop and on the laptop, the utility prepared a start-up diskette for him. This diskette would allow him to set the computer model, something like the DMI strings would be reset and Thor believed none of this, because the solution could not be this simple. He was right, because the laptop simply loaded windows again on restart and the start-up diskette did nothing. The lunch did not seem be making Thor any stronger in dealing with these failed attempts. Then Thor knew the problem: the laptop booted from the hard disk and not from the start-up diskette. He had to go to control panel and change the boot priority so that the laptop would boot from the floppy disk. This he did and on restart the laptop offered to reset the DMI strings for Portégé 4010. Thor pressed y for yes and the laptop had its model name back.
Cisco Thor did not believe what had happened. But he had to believe what had happened because the Windows installation went smoothly this time. The wrong machine message had been eliminated. Thor watched the Windows installation process, expecting something to go wrong any time. Sometimes a message would instruct to load a different CD or to take out all the CDs and these messages Thor went over fearfully, thinking Windows had encountered a terminal problem. But they were all false alarms for the paranoid Thor and Windows installation finished successfully.
Keyboard The next step was to transfer back the music collection from the desktop to the laptop. So the hard disk was taken out of the desktop and wired into the external enclosure. Always fearful of damaging the external enclosure while changing the unit inside, Thor expected a problem to occur any time. That time seemed to be now: the laptop acknowledged that something had been connected to one of its USB ports but did not know what that something was. The same problem had occurred before and Thor decided to apply the same solution, pushing one of the connections deeper in. It worked again. Thor transferred all the files back to the laptop and this included some files originally from the desktop. He then installed the virus killer he had downloaded from Kazaa earlier and he ran a scan on the laptop. This time he was taken by surprise: a virus infected his brand new installation of Windows. The virus killer could do nothing about this file. Thor guessed this virus had come with the files originally from the desktop. But Thor did not care. As long as he did not have to deal with 'wrong machine' messages, he did not care about anything else. And perhaps the virus would not be of the virulent kind. He decided to ignore the virus. Instead he proceeded to wire up the DVD-ROM drive. What happened this time left him unable to think properly: the laptop would not respond in anyway when he connected the external enclosure. The laptop had always acknowledged the use of one of its USB ports even if it had failed to recognize type of device. Scared, not knowing what to think, Thor blamed the virus. He was going to wipe the hard disk and install Windows again and this time he was going to leave those files originally from the desktop alone.
Monitor The Windows installation proceeded and concluded successfully. The problem with the external enclosure remained. Thor decided that he was going to disconnect the DVD-ROM drive and connect it again. He was sure that would work. And it did. He installed the Kazaa-downloaded virus killer again and again the same virus came up. He decided to leave it alone this time. For one thing the DVD-ROM drive was working and if the virus problem became fatal, he would simply wipe the hard disk at that time and reinstall Windows as before. But that time he decided to do without reinstalling Kazaa downloaded virus killer. He had a suspicion that the virus killer itself was infected with a virus. His suspicion was confirmed that very night: from time to time the laptop seemed to freeze and then would come up with a message saying that one of the virus-killer functions had to be closed down due to a serious error. It interfered with DVD playback. Thor decided to accept defeat that night and resolved to continue the fight the next day.
Desktop Day 5
The next day was a holiday. Thor did not have to go to work. He spent the morning reinstalling Windows and transferring the music collection back from desktop hard disk and definitely stopped short of touching the virus killer. This time the DVD-ROM went back home into the external enclosure without problems. It is now evening and Thor is feeling 10 feet tall.
