EFML:A fortnight of disasters
Warning: TLDR:D (A writer should never say this of her own writing.This one deserves the warning though).Unless you really are interested in listening to my rants.In which case you have my sincere appreciation coupled with admiration:P
I've finally found time to write:D On a serene Saturday afternoon,I'm sitting in the deserted lab listening to this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZc4JHN-Qhs
It's been so long that I've forgotten what tranquility feels like:)
You've heard what they say about getting overtly attached to people right? I learnt,the hard way,that the same holds good for gadgets too.:P
Let me start my tale of woe.On a Saturday evening identical to this one,I was idling away in my room,obviously on my laptop.My phone was tethered to the laptop and I was taking a sip of water.Precisely at that inopportune moment,my phone happened to ring.As I've done many times before,I impulsively reached for my phone forgetting the wire that bound it to the most important gadget of my life.A millisecond later,the cord tugged on the laptop and it would have tumbled to the floor.At that point,it is very difficult to recollect what exactly happened.Somehow,my laptop got drenched in quarter a bottle of water.
I know all too well what terms electronics and the elixir of life are on.Yet,I underestimated the damage thinking that the water only landed on the keyboard.I swabbed at the keyboard with a bundle of tissues,then tilted the machine on its side to let it dry under the ceiling fan set at full speed.Soon,it seemed to be dry and I continued watching the season premiere of Halt and Catch Fire.:D Thereafter,I decided to sleep.Since I have this habit of never shutting down my laptop,I just put it to sleep.Both owner and gadget rested in peace.
I woke up an hour later and opened the lid of my laptop.Nada.My heart turned cold with dread.With trembling fingers,I press the power button and the power led glows bright.Yet,the machine comes to life for barely a second or two before turning off on its own.My mind goes into the full-fledged panic mode, refusing to think.I try the power button half a dozen times to get the same result.
I have 3 virtual machines,data on two dual booted operating systems and God knows how many softwares.Although I religiously back up,I don't do it often enough that it actually comes of use in such situations,It's more of a formality.If something goes wrong.Not when.Which means that just to create an identical work environment as this would take me hundreds of painful hours.Not something I wanted to contemplate.
If only I could boot it up long enough to get at least some of the data,I sorrowfully muse.I know better though.The automatic turning off means that there's water inside--since the power and keyboard are on the same line,a short could prove dangerous.I try to be as much of a DIY person as I can.Opening up my laptop is obviously the next thing I had to do.
Sadly,although I had a couple of screwdrivers,none of them fitted.I hunted around for a screwdriver and most of the people I asked looked at me as if I'd gone nuts.Most of them being girls.Had I asked for some obscure piece of makeup,I'm sure I'd have gotten it within minutes:P Stereotypes exist because they are true to some extent,I guess! I should stop before I get called sexist. Nevertheless,it was a girl who ultimately gave me an entire set of screwdrivers. By that point in time,my nails were sore and chipped off from having tried to remove the screws using makeshift screwdrivers(spoons,knives and in desperation nails).
I quickly got rid of most of the screws and pulled out the dvd drive.To my horror,there were drops of water all over it.The damage was far,far more than I had stupidly estimated.I cursed myself for the millionth time at the foolishness of keeping water in close proximity of my laptop.The weird thing is,till something untoward happens,you never even realise that something like this could happen.I got all the screws open,save for two tiny ones.I figured I'd need a specs screwdriver to get those off.
The problem was that I couldn't get the keyboard off without getting those to open.By then,it was close to midnight and I was exhausted both mentally and physically.I again tried to dry the laptop and set it out to dry overnight.The next morning,I found the specs screwdriver--in vain,because it too wouldn't fit.Without the right tools,any problem becomes infinitely more complicated.I decided to get help.
From my friend I obtained the contact of a laptop repair guy nearby.I went there with a feeling of impending doom,I knew not why.The entire block had been demolished and he had been shifted to the basement,I was told.I called the number,it went unanswered.I came back feeling worse than ever.I have a very imaginative and contemplative brain,the flip side of which is that everything gets magnified and twisted out of proportion.It seemed to me that the demolished shop was a sign of my laptop's destruction.:P
I prepared for the worst and booted it up contrary to popular advice.My logic being that soon after the water incident,I foolishly left it on for at least 2 hours--if something horrible had to happen,it would have in those 2 hours.There's nothing new that's going to happen now.At least,I could see how bad the damage was.
It booted up this time and I was so very elated.Once the os had fully started up,I tried to check the keyboard.The moment I touched the trackpad,the pointer went crazy.I couldn't get it to click on anything.I managed to open up a document and tried all the keys--none of them worked.I tried a video.By God's grace,my speakers were fine.I plugged in my friend's keyboard and backed up the important things.Speakers,cpu.hard drive and motherboard seemed fine.Keyboard and trackpad were probably ruined.I would have left it at this if this were all.
What alarmed me was that when I pressed certain keys,the system would arbitrarily power on and off.This meant that there was a short somewhere on the power-keyboard circuit.I tried my luck at the repair shop again and this time he was open.He took my laptop and assured me that it would be restored in a day.A tiny spark of hope rose in my heart.He seemed competent enough and I decided to leave my laptop with him.
A day turned into two and all my queries were met with the standard Will be done in a few hours Ma'am.I learned from my friend that this guy was the chela(as she aptly termed him) who never actually repaired things.It was a torturous wait,but I somehow managed.A day later,he told me that it was done.
I dared not hope.I hadn't slept properly in days.I recounted that disastrous moment,over and over again in my mind,till I blamed myself entirely for it.The moment of truth was here.It booted up properly and the trackpad worked.The moment I tried the keyboard,things stopped working.And then,to my added horror,the speakers stayed mute while I played a video.The usb ports didn't work.
My mind screamed,This has to be a nightmare.What kind of a repair guy is he that he damages what was previously working? I suck at confronting people though.I mildly told him that all the aforementioned were previously working and that I expected them to be even when he returned my laptop.He asked for more time and took away my beloved machine.
That evening,I actually wept.My laptop was barely two years old.And now,it was reduced to a machine without functioning peripherals.No usb,no speakers,no keyboard.What was the point of the powerful cpu that it housed? I recalled all the research that went into buying this perfect combination of computational power and sleek design.I remembered the first time I listened to those speakers in awe.Watched with pride as it handled the humongous load I put on it without a single glitch.I was so used to its efficiency and robustness that I took them for granted.It was only now that I realised how careless I'd been.I swore to protect and care for it better if came back to me alright.It may strike you here that I'm inordinately attached to my laptop. Maybe I am. I love my laptop far more than I love most human beings:P
After that followed another agonizing wait of 3 or 4 days.This time,when he called,he said the speakers were still not working.I asked if the audio jack was,to which he replied in the affirmative.This implied a working sound card,so it struck me that it could be a software issue.Apparently,he thought along the same lines and called me minutes later telling me that it was a driver issue and that he'd fixed it.
This time,I didn't hope.I checked things one by one and they all seemed fine,except for 3 keys on my keyboard.I couldn't believe it though.Seldom do my troubles end this easily.I brought my laptop back,this time handling it as I would a fragile flower.I reached my room and re-checked everything.It all seemed fine.I breathed a sigh of relief and gratefully said a prayer.Next thing I'd typically do was to connect to the internet.Guess what.None of the college networks showed up.My gratitude was premature.Apparently life wasn't done testing me.
I wanted my network card to be fine.Everything else I could deal with.I tested tethering and it worked.Ditto for LAN.It was just WiFi that was turning up a blank.I checked the drivers and they seemed fine.Suddenly,my brain correlated my past experiences and put forth an idea--check with an android hotspot.Sure enough,it worked.I could connect and even browse.
Which meant the network card and driver were fine.It was just the college networks that had an issue.Here's where I tell you that I've had previous troubles with my sketchy Realtek wireless card.I don't know if it's the card that's bad or the college wifi configuration,but the combination definitely doesn't bode me good.Previously,I had troubles getting the college Wifi to show up on Linux.Luckily,the open source community abounds with enthusiastic geeks who rock.I could easily find a driver for my card and one insmod fixed all my woes.This time,I repeated the same on my Linux partition and it worked.
Windows,however,stubbornly refused to.I called up the system log and noticed that a new wireless driver was installed.The repair guy,with rather good intentions,thought it his duty to install new drivers for everything when he did so for sound.Perhaps he hadn't heard of the adage that says:Fix only that which isn't working. And so,this new set of drivers could somehow not detect my college networks.
For hours,I tinkered with antenna and bandwidth and power settings in vain.Finally,I concluded that a system restore should fix things up.It did not work.I would have given up,but to live without wifi is a serious handicap:P
I tried 10 drivers from the official sites of both my laptop and card vendors.I even tried broadcom and intel drivers.Nothing worked.I took it to the data center hoping there would be some tech-whiz who could solve it in minutes for me.I watched as the poor guy repeated everything I'd tried in almost the same manner before giving up.I could not call him stupid without conferring the same title on myself.I sighed in despair.I was this close to giving up.
I ordered a usb wireless transceiver.There's this weird part of me that refuses to give up,even when there's absolutely no hope.I installed and uninstalled drivers till I fell sick--literally,I caught a cold and landed up with a fever.Yet,I sat there in the lab,red-nosed and watery-eyed,trying a hundred permutations to make this thing work.I don't know if I should label myself foolish or resilient.
After 18 hours of this,I found a very old driver for the same card.It wasn't even for my laptop.I downloaded it,with no hope whatsoever.This was the 100th one.It wasn't even meant for my machine.I was just doing it because----well,I have no clue why.I didn't know what else to do:D
I installed it.You know what? All the networks showed up.I was delirious with happiness.It was obviously a better driver for my laptop than the ones that were officially said to be.But there was no way I'd have found it by brute force.It had to be luck.Something like this:
I've finally found time to write:D On a serene Saturday afternoon,I'm sitting in the deserted lab listening to this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZc4JHN-Qhs
It's been so long that I've forgotten what tranquility feels like:)
Let me start my tale of woe.On a Saturday evening identical to this one,I was idling away in my room,obviously on my laptop.My phone was tethered to the laptop and I was taking a sip of water.Precisely at that inopportune moment,my phone happened to ring.As I've done many times before,I impulsively reached for my phone forgetting the wire that bound it to the most important gadget of my life.A millisecond later,the cord tugged on the laptop and it would have tumbled to the floor.At that point,it is very difficult to recollect what exactly happened.Somehow,my laptop got drenched in quarter a bottle of water.
I know all too well what terms electronics and the elixir of life are on.Yet,I underestimated the damage thinking that the water only landed on the keyboard.I swabbed at the keyboard with a bundle of tissues,then tilted the machine on its side to let it dry under the ceiling fan set at full speed.Soon,it seemed to be dry and I continued watching the season premiere of Halt and Catch Fire.:D Thereafter,I decided to sleep.Since I have this habit of never shutting down my laptop,I just put it to sleep.Both owner and gadget rested in peace.
I woke up an hour later and opened the lid of my laptop.Nada.My heart turned cold with dread.With trembling fingers,I press the power button and the power led glows bright.Yet,the machine comes to life for barely a second or two before turning off on its own.My mind goes into the full-fledged panic mode, refusing to think.I try the power button half a dozen times to get the same result.
I have 3 virtual machines,data on two dual booted operating systems and God knows how many softwares.Although I religiously back up,I don't do it often enough that it actually comes of use in such situations,It's more of a formality.If something goes wrong.Not when.Which means that just to create an identical work environment as this would take me hundreds of painful hours.Not something I wanted to contemplate.
If only I could boot it up long enough to get at least some of the data,I sorrowfully muse.I know better though.The automatic turning off means that there's water inside--since the power and keyboard are on the same line,a short could prove dangerous.I try to be as much of a DIY person as I can.Opening up my laptop is obviously the next thing I had to do.
Sadly,although I had a couple of screwdrivers,none of them fitted.I hunted around for a screwdriver and most of the people I asked looked at me as if I'd gone nuts.Most of them being girls.Had I asked for some obscure piece of makeup,I'm sure I'd have gotten it within minutes:P Stereotypes exist because they are true to some extent,I guess! I should stop before I get called sexist. Nevertheless,it was a girl who ultimately gave me an entire set of screwdrivers. By that point in time,my nails were sore and chipped off from having tried to remove the screws using makeshift screwdrivers(spoons,knives and in desperation nails).
I quickly got rid of most of the screws and pulled out the dvd drive.To my horror,there were drops of water all over it.The damage was far,far more than I had stupidly estimated.I cursed myself for the millionth time at the foolishness of keeping water in close proximity of my laptop.The weird thing is,till something untoward happens,you never even realise that something like this could happen.I got all the screws open,save for two tiny ones.I figured I'd need a specs screwdriver to get those off.
The problem was that I couldn't get the keyboard off without getting those to open.By then,it was close to midnight and I was exhausted both mentally and physically.I again tried to dry the laptop and set it out to dry overnight.The next morning,I found the specs screwdriver--in vain,because it too wouldn't fit.Without the right tools,any problem becomes infinitely more complicated.I decided to get help.
From my friend I obtained the contact of a laptop repair guy nearby.I went there with a feeling of impending doom,I knew not why.The entire block had been demolished and he had been shifted to the basement,I was told.I called the number,it went unanswered.I came back feeling worse than ever.I have a very imaginative and contemplative brain,the flip side of which is that everything gets magnified and twisted out of proportion.It seemed to me that the demolished shop was a sign of my laptop's destruction.:P
I prepared for the worst and booted it up contrary to popular advice.My logic being that soon after the water incident,I foolishly left it on for at least 2 hours--if something horrible had to happen,it would have in those 2 hours.There's nothing new that's going to happen now.At least,I could see how bad the damage was.
It booted up this time and I was so very elated.Once the os had fully started up,I tried to check the keyboard.The moment I touched the trackpad,the pointer went crazy.I couldn't get it to click on anything.I managed to open up a document and tried all the keys--none of them worked.I tried a video.By God's grace,my speakers were fine.I plugged in my friend's keyboard and backed up the important things.Speakers,cpu.hard drive and motherboard seemed fine.Keyboard and trackpad were probably ruined.I would have left it at this if this were all.
What alarmed me was that when I pressed certain keys,the system would arbitrarily power on and off.This meant that there was a short somewhere on the power-keyboard circuit.I tried my luck at the repair shop again and this time he was open.He took my laptop and assured me that it would be restored in a day.A tiny spark of hope rose in my heart.He seemed competent enough and I decided to leave my laptop with him.
A day turned into two and all my queries were met with the standard Will be done in a few hours Ma'am.I learned from my friend that this guy was the chela(as she aptly termed him) who never actually repaired things.It was a torturous wait,but I somehow managed.A day later,he told me that it was done.
I dared not hope.I hadn't slept properly in days.I recounted that disastrous moment,over and over again in my mind,till I blamed myself entirely for it.The moment of truth was here.It booted up properly and the trackpad worked.The moment I tried the keyboard,things stopped working.And then,to my added horror,the speakers stayed mute while I played a video.The usb ports didn't work.
My mind screamed,This has to be a nightmare.What kind of a repair guy is he that he damages what was previously working? I suck at confronting people though.I mildly told him that all the aforementioned were previously working and that I expected them to be even when he returned my laptop.He asked for more time and took away my beloved machine.
That evening,I actually wept.My laptop was barely two years old.And now,it was reduced to a machine without functioning peripherals.No usb,no speakers,no keyboard.What was the point of the powerful cpu that it housed? I recalled all the research that went into buying this perfect combination of computational power and sleek design.I remembered the first time I listened to those speakers in awe.Watched with pride as it handled the humongous load I put on it without a single glitch.I was so used to its efficiency and robustness that I took them for granted.It was only now that I realised how careless I'd been.I swore to protect and care for it better if came back to me alright.It may strike you here that I'm inordinately attached to my laptop. Maybe I am. I love my laptop far more than I love most human beings:P
After that followed another agonizing wait of 3 or 4 days.This time,when he called,he said the speakers were still not working.I asked if the audio jack was,to which he replied in the affirmative.This implied a working sound card,so it struck me that it could be a software issue.Apparently,he thought along the same lines and called me minutes later telling me that it was a driver issue and that he'd fixed it.
This time,I didn't hope.I checked things one by one and they all seemed fine,except for 3 keys on my keyboard.I couldn't believe it though.Seldom do my troubles end this easily.I brought my laptop back,this time handling it as I would a fragile flower.I reached my room and re-checked everything.It all seemed fine.I breathed a sigh of relief and gratefully said a prayer.Next thing I'd typically do was to connect to the internet.Guess what.None of the college networks showed up.My gratitude was premature.Apparently life wasn't done testing me.
I wanted my network card to be fine.Everything else I could deal with.I tested tethering and it worked.Ditto for LAN.It was just WiFi that was turning up a blank.I checked the drivers and they seemed fine.Suddenly,my brain correlated my past experiences and put forth an idea--check with an android hotspot.Sure enough,it worked.I could connect and even browse.
Which meant the network card and driver were fine.It was just the college networks that had an issue.Here's where I tell you that I've had previous troubles with my sketchy Realtek wireless card.I don't know if it's the card that's bad or the college wifi configuration,but the combination definitely doesn't bode me good.Previously,I had troubles getting the college Wifi to show up on Linux.Luckily,the open source community abounds with enthusiastic geeks who rock.I could easily find a driver for my card and one insmod fixed all my woes.This time,I repeated the same on my Linux partition and it worked.
Windows,however,stubbornly refused to.I called up the system log and noticed that a new wireless driver was installed.The repair guy,with rather good intentions,thought it his duty to install new drivers for everything when he did so for sound.Perhaps he hadn't heard of the adage that says:Fix only that which isn't working. And so,this new set of drivers could somehow not detect my college networks.
For hours,I tinkered with antenna and bandwidth and power settings in vain.Finally,I concluded that a system restore should fix things up.It did not work.I would have given up,but to live without wifi is a serious handicap:P
I tried 10 drivers from the official sites of both my laptop and card vendors.I even tried broadcom and intel drivers.Nothing worked.I took it to the data center hoping there would be some tech-whiz who could solve it in minutes for me.I watched as the poor guy repeated everything I'd tried in almost the same manner before giving up.I could not call him stupid without conferring the same title on myself.I sighed in despair.I was this close to giving up.
I ordered a usb wireless transceiver.There's this weird part of me that refuses to give up,even when there's absolutely no hope.I installed and uninstalled drivers till I fell sick--literally,I caught a cold and landed up with a fever.Yet,I sat there in the lab,red-nosed and watery-eyed,trying a hundred permutations to make this thing work.I don't know if I should label myself foolish or resilient.
After 18 hours of this,I found a very old driver for the same card.It wasn't even for my laptop.I downloaded it,with no hope whatsoever.This was the 100th one.It wasn't even meant for my machine.I was just doing it because----well,I have no clue why.I didn't know what else to do:D
I installed it.You know what? All the networks showed up.I was delirious with happiness.It was obviously a better driver for my laptop than the ones that were officially said to be.But there was no way I'd have found it by brute force.It had to be luck.Something like this:
That night,I finally slept peacefully.It's been almost a week since then.My fever spiked up and the cold worsened to a point where I couldn't breathe.In fact,there was one night when I woke up feeling terrified of God knows what.Then,I gradually got better and today I'm back to normal.Typing away on my laptop.It too,is almost fine.It has lost a couple of keys,a couple of keys are bent,a couple don't work.We're both scarred.And ironically,I cherish my laptop more than I ever did.It's more beautiful with its scars:P
Two Saturdays from that fateful evening,I sit here watching the sun set,feeling peaceful.I even look at this entire set of events as fortunate now.Worse could have happened.It somehow didn't.
What did I learn from this? Plenty
Life lessons:
- Troubleshooting:When things go wrong,it's easy to freak out.What you need to do is keep your calm and think your way through.Analyse.Figure it out.Time to bring out the Sherlock in you:D
- Perseverance:If you want something,you should want it badly enough.So much that you're ready to go all the way down to hell for it.That's the only way you'll get it.
- Hope against hope: This is the only way you'll live.It's more emotional than logical,but nevertheless necessary.
- Acceptance:Don't live in denial.It's a fool's paradise.Accept,then fix.
Technical epiphanies:
- A driver is arguably the most important piece of code--it gives life to hardware.Without the right one,software and hardware shall never work in harmony.
- Virtualization is the need of the hour:precisely to prevent such accidents,it would be better if all you had was a blank terminal while your cpu and hard drive were safely located elsewhere where no harm could befall them.
Lastly,don't keep your water bottle close to your laptop.Accidents happen no matter how careful you are.Also,don't get overtly attached to anything--people and gadgets:P
P.S:My heartfelt thanks to Jarvis and Dragon Rider for accompanying me a gazillion times to that dratted repair shop.And to everyone else who lent me things--screwdrivers,hair dryer,mouse,keyboard(Most of these being Jarvis again) and most importantly hope,encouragement and kind words.
This turned out to be reaaallly long,I'm guessing:P
This turned out to be reaaallly long,I'm guessing:P
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