Computers...UGH!

Technology is something else ~ very good, but also very frustrating for those of us who live in the perimeters of understanding...

My husband and I stepped up from dial up to cable modem recently. Part of the hesitation, aside from the obvious financial difference, was my fear of not being able to transfer the data and keep our Outlook/Explorer programs working. I knew things would need to be reconfigured, and was concerned that in the process I would lose everything. I had done this twice before (lost all things...but due to a virus, not changes/upgrades) and was intimidated by my lack of knowledge. Bo uses the computer even less than I do, basically just for email, so together we are not techno-savvy. Our kids are also too young to have the background yet.

Anyway, we embraced the faster internet service at the end of January following a few months of discussion, and an appealing offer from Comcast. We disconnected our dial up connection service ten days later. I thought everything had been finally debugged.

Over the past two weeks, we have had intermittent service. Sometimes we had to reconfigure everything, other times we had to reboot to get it working. We were primarily able to get online through Internet Explorer versus Outlook. We often had to check our accounts through the comcast website, if we got online at all. This left me somewhat nutty without my contacts and other things, but it was functional. We have also had some people tell us they got emails bounced back to them during this process. Bill Little, a dear friend from church, came over and spent an hour or more, on two occasions, with much the same results we had been getting on our own...sometimes it worked, sometimes did not. He tried to give us a secondary access through a laptop of his, but our computer would not read it. His diagnosis - our computer was too archaic (we are running on a 386...yes, for those of you who know, 486 was the first that had any pentium processing...). I thought to agree, but still thought we could get it working since sometimes it did work. I rationalized that it wouldn't have worked at all if it was the computer.

My former husband (Steve) then offered his help. He is a network engineer at the Pentagon, so I figured surely he could do this. This man is a genius with computers (not kidding; it is a true and incredible gifting). He worked on it the evening of our daugter's birthday gathering (and thought he had it working when he left). I called him the next morning to ask some questions since I couldn't get online again. He came back the next day and spent an hour or more of his time trying to fix it. He finally gave up as well. His diagnosis ~ this is intermittent, there is nothing I can do. Call Comcast. (He was astounded that we had Windows XP running on this computer, so figured it wasn't the comuputer since that was working, he thought it might be in the modem).

Comcast came the next morning. They got the same results we had all been getting. Good ip addresses at all times, able to get online while they were here, and didn't see anything "wrong" even though we couldn't get my desktop email program to work. The guy from Comcast actually consistently got online through Internet Explorer (neither Bill, Steve, nor myself had been able to do that). Of course, right after he left, I couldn't get online again (despite the fact that the icon at the bottom of my monitor showed a good cable connection, as it had for two weeks). I was SOOO frustrated.

In prayer I remembered a couple of comments from Steve and the Comcast representative about my computer. The Ethernet Adapter is connected through a USB port. Steve thought the USB converter might be buggy, the fella from Comcast thought it might be the port and had suggested I look behind the computer for another port. I got down on my belly and looked at the port and converter. During our past life together, Steve had labeled one of the two ports on the front of the desktop "10." The converter had "10/100 Fast Ethernet" written on the front. I put two and two together, and moved the plug over to the previously labeled port (mind you, it fit in the port it was in, and this port had been used for other USB devices).

Guess what?! No problems since that time. Praise God! Bo and I were about ready to "go buy a computer NOW" to get life smoothed out again. I do work from home at times, and this has been really upsetting to me because of the amount of time I "wasted" working on configuring and reconfiguring things each day just so I could get online to my work. I even went to the library one day to do my work. It was becoming an agitation. It is awful to know that we are so dependent upon our computer. I am glad I don't do my banking online, too.

Now we can wait and do some research before buying a new computer at a reasonable price, which we had been talking about purchasing after taxes. Phew. I am eager to get a new computer, after all, we do have one that could stand many upgrades. However, I hate buying when somewhat desperate as that is rarely prudent. This recent glitch has just served to prove to us that our plan to upgrade this spring really is a wise one and not just selfish.

Thank God for all our helpers, thanks falso or the opportunity for me to see that I really am not as illiterate as I thought for troubleshooting (though I did have a few major boo boos while doing it, Steve fixed those for me so they weren't irreperable). I am prayful that all is smooth again, though will not rest fully easily for a few days...may this recent thing that WORKED be the final fix.

Blessings on your day. :-)