Brick for a day! February 19, 2008
Posted by gordonwatts in computers.trackback
Well, I suffered all day, so you will too (well, only as long as it takes you to read this post). My new portable spent most of the day masquerading as a door stop. It was doing a darn good impression too.
It was me being stupid. I installed a recent OS update despite warnings to the contrary (that this very thing might happen). But I saw several others on the net had done it, and they owned the same portable. No prooooblem!
Er… no. I guess there are different versions of the same portable out there. Whatever, my computer would never get beyond a blank screen in the boot process. Of course, after it happened I started reading about it.
Recovery was pretty painless, considering I didn’t have a backup. It is very cool we’ve gotten to the point I can boot my portable off a USB key - there really is no longer a need for a DVDROM reader in my portable!
At any rate, the lesson is: when the vendor says “don’t install, might cause bad problems,” listen — especially the night before you will be depending on it! Yes, I have gone to school. Perhaps I’ll learn sometime soon!
A hard counterexample to the “myth” that most physicists and engineers use Linux these days…
Indeed — but I am one of the few among the younger folks. Mac’s have taken the place of Windows machines. Linux machines are what most do their analysis on (and some Macs are starting to be used for that as well).