Friday morning, I went to my computer to check my mail, and discovered that it wouldn't boot up. It would get part way into the process and then stick, beep a signal at me, and then start all over again. I didn't have the faintest idea what had happened since the night before. When I'd closed the computer down and gone to bed, it was working.
Luckily we were expecting number three son to visit, and he's been given the IT position in our household. So, I practiced my patience. His first question was, had I added any new programs, or had I deleted anything the night before. Nope. I told him that I was having some problems with the computer recognizing my DSL line, but otherwise, there was nothing I could tell him that might guide his search.
He tried booting up, and noticed that an error message was being displayed for one second. He rebooted repeatedly, getting one word of the error message at a time, until he could determine that the problem had to do with the keyboard. We swapped keyboards and, sure enough, it booted right up.
I contacted Dell, and they were willing to order a new keyboard for us, but they needed several pieces of information. It took me until today to supply all the information, and I can expect a new keyboard in five to seven business days.
Their response was very timely, but five to seven business days if the keyboard is in stock, seems to be pretty slow service. I'm lucky that we have several computers in the house, both new and old, so that we can swap parts.
It's a bit awkward, having to go back to an older keyboard, but it works. I'm relieved that I was only out of contact a day or so.
Thanks #3 Son! We appreciate your expertise.
Comments (6)
Buffy,
It's good that you had a spare keyboard to hand. In our house and faced with such a problem we would just have to wait for a new keyboard to be delivered...
Glad you are still able to post here.
Posted by Adele | November 28, 2004 2:33 PM
Posted on November 28, 2004 14:33
Adele,
I was having terrible withdrawal symptoms from the half of a day I was without my keyboard! And the heck of it was, I could have had some time on the office computer, so I wasn't totally cut off. I'm seriously addicted.
Posted by Buffy | November 28, 2004 4:20 PM
Posted on November 28, 2004 16:20
Hey, I can finally get to the comments! I thought maybe your using a different keyboard had messed up stuff - LOL!
I always save keyboards, mice and memmory off of old computers just in case they come in useful in the future. I've had mice die before, but never a keyboard - good catch by Son #3!
Posted by bogie | December 1, 2004 4:43 AM
Posted on December 1, 2004 04:43
Good grief...we save the entire computer! We've given one to a church, and I think a second one will go to one of my nephews. I've never killed a mouse, and this keyboard that died was only eight months old. That would have to be built-in obsolescence.
It sounds like I may need to let my host know that we're having problems with the comments. You couldn't get your comments to post??
Posted by Buffy | December 1, 2004 11:23 AM
Posted on December 1, 2004 11:23
Actually I haven't been able to get the comments to even come up since Friday (I couldn't even see what others had comments). This morning comments are acting a little strange, but obviously a lot better than they were.
Posted by bogie | December 2, 2004 4:29 AM
Posted on December 2, 2004 04:29
How odd! I'll have to see if redeaglespirit1 was working on the program. I'm glad it was just since Friday. I was afraid that it had been longer.
Posted by Buffy | December 2, 2004 3:55 PM
Posted on December 2, 2004 15:55