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July 15, 2008
Expecting your computer "not to change"
You hear a lot about PCs running Microsoft Windows. In a recent episode of Criminal Minds, the writers even take a swipe at Windows by working in a plotline where a nasty guy fakes PC incompetence to engage the sympathy and interest of the resident FBI girl geek. Well, when you (Windows) are a tall poppy, everybody's out there with shears.
We often see newbies and even experienced computer users collapse in shock when their machine goes "funny". I was on a support call to a good friend and client about how her mouse in Word and Excel decided to action things via single click rather than double click. Puzzled, I asked her to check in Windows Control Panel's Mouse settings. No. Not that and she wasn't in Como Pomo Control Panel when the mouse started behaving oddly. I suspect some hardware issue and asked her to switch mice. Failing which, she might carry out a System Restore if she had a Restore Point handy. Another even closer friend was telling me, after a routine AVG anti-virus scan, AVG hated his MBR (Master Boot Record) and decided to trash the hard disk. I told him for next time, instead of succumbing to a whole hard disk image restore, try saving his MBR and have a boot disk handy with an MBR utility that could put that small but critical sector of data back.
Thing is, though, many people think of a computer like a wooden desk. It shouldn't change, shouldn't move. The computer isn't like that though. It changes as a result of your useage. If you really want the computer not to change, then you might think of employing one of several strategies to "forget everything" when you reboot. Everything would go "pfft!" - Of course, you would want to save your documents before that happened.
Posted by Anandasim at July 15, 2008 07:22 PM
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Comments
If you do want to keep Windows in a 'Steady State' have a look at this from Microsoft.
Posted by: Stephen ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://bleedingedge.com.au/blog/nav-commenters.gif)
at July 16, 2008 11:20 PM