Blogging Problems Sorted

The first of two posts today.

After struggling since Tuesday, with both laptops suddenly deciding I couldn’t publish blog posts from Windows LiveWriter to Blogger, which proved that this wasn’t a Windows 10 issue as I’d originally thought because the old laptop has Win7 on it, I spent some considerable time yesterday, searching for solutions online. Eventually, after reading numerous comments on a forum which contained quite a few useful links, I found a link to this blog, which had a quite excellent step-by-step tutorial on how to resolve this issue.

I am posting about this in some detail, in case there are others out there, tearing their hair in frustration and not knowing where to turn. I hope this post will help someone!

It turns out that recently, Goggle changed the way that people log into their Google accounts, from a one-step to a two-step process (for added security) and this made it incompatible with Windows LiveWriter, Microsoft’s excellent blog post composing software. Thousands of people around the world love this program, as I do, and were endlessly frustrated by the lack of action on both Google’s and Microsoft’s part to resolve the issue – both of the giants were busy blaming each other and sending frustrated customers from one to the other, while issuing airy promises that “action was being taken” and promises that it would be fixed “in a few months’ time,” none of which was any use to the users who required action NOW! There really isn’t an equivalent piece of software that measures up in any way with LiveWriter, and what there is, also experienced the same problem since Google changed its rules, leaving us with only one alternative, to compose our blog posts in Blogger itself. This part of Blogger, I have to say, is total rubbish. The formatting is all over the place, and what you get when you compose the post, is not what appears when you publish it. If you try composing in the LiveWriter html page, and copying and pasting the code into Blogger, none of the pictures are transferred across, and the formatting is again all over the place. Total nightmare.

People were demanding that either Google got its act together and provided us with a decent authoring program attached to Blogger, rendering LiveWriter unnecessary, or that Microsoft honoured its somewhat vague promise of some months ago to release LiveWriter as an open source program, so that the techies out there could get their hands on it and make sure that these problems never arose again – and give us an even better product. Neither of these scenarios looked set to happen any time soon, and we were all left in the lurch.

What I don’t understand is why this didn’t arise in my case much earlier than this, and the only thing I can think of is that starting with Windows 10, it brought it to the forefront, but that doesn’t explain why my old laptop, running Windows 7, also refused to upload blog posts last night.

Anyway, I followed the step-by-step instructions to set up the two-step log-in process introduced by Google, and then added a special password for LiveWriter, which is now permanently attached to it. After I’d done this fix, I tried uploading a test post, and IT WORKED!!

However, when this first happened, immediately after I set up my new laptop with Windows 10, I did some sort of fix – I can’t remember exactly what I did because I tried several things, but I think it was to allow Google to be less secure – something which flagged up a lot of messages from Google, so I set it back to its original state. After this, it wouldn’t work again.

Having read some of the comments following the step-by-step tutorial, where people found that the fix worked to start with, and then reverted to its non-working state again, I am not quite ready to put out the flags just yet. I am hoping this is a permanent fix, until Google decides to change its rules again in its characteristically arrogant and high-handed manner – I am pretty fed up with Google really, because they don’t listen to their users, and they are notorious for publicising our personal info, and they’ve also taken over far too much of the Internet for my liking – if your account goes down, there’s a load of stuff you can’t access until it’s sorted – for instance, Blogger and Youtube. If you try to get help on their so-called “support” pages all you get is multiple choice questions, and if your problem isn’t there, well, you just have to go jump in the lake for all they care. There is no way to contact a real person by email or by phone or whatever, and your only resort is to find some more sensible and generous people on the many forums out there, who have found out how to do things and are prepared to give us the benefit of their wisdom.

Rant over. Let’s hope the wretched thing stays working! I could do without the hassle.

Zentangles and Other Matters

If you want a good laugh at Shoshi’s expense, hop over to the Gutless Bag Lady blog (link at top of RH side bar) and see her glamorous new underwear lol! Now all she’s got to watch out for is that she doesn’t get knocked down by a bus.

I’ve got an exciting new project in progress, and as soon as I hear that it’s OK to do so, I shall be blogging about it.

Meantime, I have got my Zentangle kit out again, and have drawn a few more of the ATC-sized cards for my Zentangle album. I realise that I haven’t updated my Zentangles on my blog or on Flickr and I will need to go through them all to see exactly what is missing, but in the meantime here are some that I am pretty sure are not uploaded, and the ones I drew today.

Kringel was one that I discovered online today, and which I know is going to be a new favourite border tangle. There are lots of variations, and it’s pretty easy to draw too.

Another new favourite is “That C Thing” (I love the name!) which I also discovered today – it’s basically “C” shapes with wiggles on them, and circles to fill in, and the whole thing looks like a joyous bubbling sea, hence my art work! This is a fun tangle and dead easy to draw.

The final new one from today is another really fun one – “Kitty” – again, dead easy – I did this card in a matter of a few minutes. I know Zentangles are not strictly speaking supposed to be representational but I couldn’t resist this one! The others are all ones I did some months ago or even as long ago as last year. I shall be uploading them as individual images once I get organised, and you’ll be able to see them more clearly.

It’s definitely more than high time I got back to tangling. I should have been doing it throughout my cancer journey, for its calming benefits and the lovely feeling of “being in the zone” but somehow it’s taken a back seat lately. It’s definitely something I can do on the recliner with the laptop open beside me for looking up new designs, and eventually I’ll get a whole lot of new and useful material for my album.

I’m definitely feeling better today after my last chemo session – this time (treatment #5) I’ve definitely been worse affected than before, and still can’t shift the horrible sour taste in my mouth. My friend Shaz says that pear drops are good for that, but I told her that would be just replacing one horrible taste with another!! I hate the things! Anyway, apart from that, it’s been the same old effects only more so – devastating fatigue, generally feeling terribly unwell (although not nauseous thank goodness – the meds take care of that), peripheral neuropathy – and this time I noticed a loss of sensation in my feet – and not being able to keep awake. Dreadful brainfog too.

I am going to tell them all this when I see the oncologist on Thursday of next week, and they are always particularly interested in the neuropathy because if you don’t watch out, it can become permanent. I’ve been told we’ve got a bit of leeway as far as the chemo dosage is concerned and they can still reduce it a bit more, so I’m going to ask for that. The increased steroid dose this time seems to have made no difference at all, and with the cumulative effect of the chemo, I’ve definitely been worse this time. At least I’ve now got a clear week to get some things done, and there’s a pile of stuff awaiting my attention in the studio – and I can’t wait to get stuck in!! After this last session being so horrible, and knowing that I’ve still got 3 more to go, I’m beginning to feel pretty frustrated now, because in each cycle there’s really only one week when I feel well enough to do anything. I have to keep reminding myself not to say “still got 3 to go” but instead, “I’ve only got 3 more to go!” which sounds a lot more positive. Words are so powerful, aren’t they. Spoken aloud, they can change one’s whole attitude.

One great thing, Beatrice, our older cat, who seems very sensitive to my chemo and won’t normally come near me, has been all over me these past 2 or 3 days and can’t get enough of me! Very flattering, especially when my hubby’s in the room because those 2 are joined at the heart and she usually runs to him, given the choice! It’s nice to be back in her good graces again, but not sure how long it will last after next Friday when I have chemo #6.

I’ve been busy putting stuff on my new laptop, and this evening had an extremely frustrating evening where nothing seemed to go right. I tried posting my first blog post from the new laptop and it wouldn’t publish, saying it could not connect with the remote server. I tried everything I could think of, and then did a google search for the problem, which came up with several suggestions, none of which seemed to work, but eventually, after trying one of these, and also re-downloading the latest version of Windows LiveWriter (the blog writing software that I use), and then discovering by chance in one of Windows Edge’s (IE replacement with Win10) deeper menus that “use proxy server” was checked, I unchecked it, and suddenly all is well – so I’m not entirely sure what I did to put it right!

I am delighted with the new laptop so far. It came with Win8, and as soon as I started setting it all up, I was asked if I wanted to upgrade to Win10, which I did, but didn’t need the installation file I’d saved on a memory stick from Microsoft for the free upgrade, because it all happened seamlessly as part of the set-up process, and I never even had to encounter the dreaded Win8 for even a second! I can’t tell a lot of difference between 10 and 7, except for a slight change in the start menu, and a cleaner, crisper looking interface which I really like. It seems to function in the same way (mostly!) and so far all my software is working OK without any hitches. It should run a lot more efficiently, and certainly, with the added power onboard, this laptop is staying remarkably cool and I don’t think I shall need the laptop cooler mat. It’s also very quiet, even when the fan is running.

When I first got going, I was aware that there was a pre-installed free subscription to a paid-for anti-virus program which came with HP, so I didn’t bother to install my free AVG anti-virus which I’ve used very satisfactorily for several years now. As soon as I got on the Internet, weird web pages started appearing without my say so, and I started getting some unusual pop-ups in my notification area, and before I knew it, I was absolutely swamped with malware, and spent many hours wrestling with this – as soon as I got rid of any of it, more started appearing! I felt as if I was under a sustained attack by locusts, or wrestling with a very large and bad-tempered octopus, until I thought “Blow this for a lark” and bunged AVG on asap, and after that I was able to purge the system of most of the rubbish, and with a bit of online help, delve deeper into Firefox and my control panel and uninstall the rest. Some of the Internet settings seem to have been upset – whether by this or because of some default settings (which gave rise to my Blogger problems this evening) I don’t know, but I think I’ve got it all sorted out at last! A slightly rocky journey, but we’re on the way now.

Rather than just dumping all my data onto the new laptop’s hard drive, I’m taking this opportunity for some serious spring (late summer?) cleaning and getting rid of a lot of old rubbish, converting a lot of photos from png format to jpg (which reduces the size to less than half) and organising my now considerable collection of photos and videos into a more rational system (there really wasn’t much of a system before!) so that I can actually find things now! It’s a long job and I’ve so far only scratched the surface, but this is an ongoing job that I can cope with when I’m dealing with chemo effects, once the most devastating stage is behind me in each cycle.

It’s a fun new toy, and is running a LOT faster than the old laptop which really is on its last legs now, with various bits of hardware starting to fail (e.g. the DVD drive). It’s many years old now, and was 2nd hand when I got it, so high time for a replacement. It’s still working, so I’ll probably keep it on as a spare, and for storage – unusually it has 2 hard drives and each is about 300 GB so some useful space there – one can never have enough HD space in my opinion! If I do decide to ditch it in the future, I shall extract the HDs and put them in caddies to use as external USB drives.

The new laptop has a 1TB hybrid SSD (split between a conventional spinning HD and the new Solid State HD) and 12 GB RAM so it’s working a lot faster than the old one. Considering that I spend a large portion of each day on the recliner, on the laptop, which is my lifeline to the world as a virtually house-bound person,  think this is a good investment that should keep me going for a good number of years!

Computer Upgrade–Home Again!

I’ve got my computer home again – what a relief! I’m in the process of reinstalling everything now, and I am sure that it will all run nice and smoothly now that the problem has been resolved.

We had a wonderful day out today and picked up the computer on the way – whenever we left the car my hubby (bless his heart!) carried the computer in its bag so that it wasn’t left unattended in the car – it’s no mean weight, and I was most grateful that he kept it safe for me.

Until I’ve got everything back onto it, I can’t sort all the photos I took today, but as soon as I’ve got my photo editing software back on, I’ll get down to it and do a blog about our lovely day in Cornwall.

I’m a very happy bunny indeed, relaxing on the recliner with my feet up, with my erstwhile poorly pooter downloading its anti-virus program beside me, tired after our spiffing day out. Never mind that tomorrow I’ll probably crash with the dreaded M.E. post-exertional malaise – I feel totally spiffed!!!!!

Computer Upgrade–Good News at Last

On the Sunday morning when I came down, I found that the computer had tried to reboot itself, and was showing the black screen and the bl***ing cursor again!!! At this point I threw in the towel and phoned Kevin. He said they’d gladly fix it for me, in his usual laid-back way – no problem!! My hubby took it in for me that afternoon.

I’ve just phoned to see if it’s ready for us to pick up tomorrow on our way through to Cornwall and he said all was well, and the problem was caused by a completely unexpected problem; after running numerous tests they’d consulted an HP forum and discovered that this particular model of laptop’s motherboard doesn’t support two 500GB drives! He’s replaced them with two 320GB ones (the largest it will support) and reinstalled Windows, and it’s going like a dream now.

I am really pleased that it’s nothing more complicated; some of these intermittent faults and problems that manifest themselves differently each time, can be very difficult to diagnose, and until a definite cause is found, very hard to treat (a bit like M.E.!!!) but in this case, the BIOS was struggling to boot Windows on a disc that it wasn’t properly recognising, and once the correct one was installed, there was no longer any problem.

I asked Kevin how much I owed him, and he said, “It’s the other way round! – I owe you a refund for the difference between the price of the hard drives.” I said surely I must owe him for all the work he’d done but he said no – again I told him my Wonderwoman home help charged more than he did!

So all being well, I shall have my computer back again tomorrow. I haven’t got my 1TB disc capacity, of course, but perhaps I was being a bit greedy – 600GB total is plenty, I’m sure! Video does take up such a lot of space though…

Hopefully this will be the end of the saga, and within a day or two I should have everything back on, and be running normally again, which will be a relief – I’ve got a lot to do and have missed having the ability to do graphics work over the past few days.

Computer Upgrade–or Computer Nightmare?

This is getting beyond a joke… Phoned Kevin the Computer Man this a.m. and he said it sounded like a hardware problem, and explained to me how to download a program called “SeaTools” from Seagate, the manufacturer of my hard drives, and use it to run a test of the discs. The second hard drive passed, but the first (drive C) failed. I rang Kevin again and he said take the  faulty disc out, put the other one in the 1st drive position and reinstall Windows onto it.

I did this, and was a bit fed up because it meant all the work I’d already done, reinstalling all my progs and data, would have to be done again. This I proceeded to do, and all went well until I allowed a major Windows update to take place, which failed towards the end (90 items!) – I then had to restart the computer and………

It failed to boot. Black screen, small white blinking cursor in top right corner. Tried booting from Windows CD. Same thing. Ran the BIOS and was told……… No data! Replace disc!! What? 2 hard drives failing in as many days? Is this coincidence?

Tried booting from the Windows CD, and started the Startup Repair wizard again, but it told me there was nothing wrong, and to unplug anything I’d plugged in, e.g. external hard drive, digital camera. I never got far enough to plug in anything apart from the mains lead!

Tried to boot in Safe Mode, and a message came up that there was a failure in configuring Windows updates, and it was reverting changes. It then shut down, restarted, and showed me the same message. Then it shut down again, and when it started again, it was the black screen and the blinking (I could actually think of a stronger word now!) cursor.

Been on various forums which say that it could be a PSU (power supply unit) problem, or faulty RAM. Or various other things.

The upshot is, my computer has died. I can’t think of anything else to try. Of course, it’s Sunday tomorrow so I can’t do anything. First thing Monday, I’m phoning Kevin again – I am reluctantly admitting defeat, and it will have to go in for inpatient treatment.

My hubby will have to take it in for me. He’s being very good about it, but I have no idea what he’s up to on Monday and if he will have time or not. He made one very unhelpful remark this evening: “Why didn’t you just leave it as it was? It was working fine before you started messing about with it.” He said it was like in Star Trek Voyager. There they are, stuck in the Delta Quadrant, trying to get home, and what do they do? They investigate every single spatial anomaly, and answer every distress call, and it ALWAYS ends in tears… He says they should ignore them all, and just try and get home! I tell him that would make for a very boring TV series.

He’s right, of course, but my computer wasn’t quite up to doing what I wanted it to do, and I was keen to have an upgrade. The other computer was fine when I upgraded to Windows 7, and I thought this would be the same.

More fool me. Grrrr.

 

Later – small hours, Sunday a.m. I decided to try one more thing – booted into Safe Mode and ran a System Restore to the point before the last Windows update. It worked! I am now back in Windows proper, and everything seems fine so far. I’m in the process of running SeaTools on Drive C – the short test resulted in a pass, so I’m running the long test just to make sure. Not sure if I’ll stay up to see the result – last time it took over 2 hours, although it might be quicker if I’m only testing one drive, and if it fails, it will stop then anyway.

If it fails, the computer will have to go in to Kevin next week. If it passes, I am going to have to try and find out which Windows update caused such a devastating result – I shall phone Kevin on Monday anyway to tell him what’s happened and seek his advice, whether or not I find anything out.

Computer Upgrade

It booted fine this a.m. despite the fact that Beatrice got her paw in before I got there, and tried to log onto Windows with her ultra-long password again! (Apparently Windows had restarted after an update, which was encouraging because it showed that the Startup Repair wizard appeared to have worked).

I’ve done quite a bit on it today, including finding and downloading a display driver which has definitely improved performance sufficiently to run my new video editor, which was hanging every time I opened it.

However... still major booting problems. It takes simply aaaages... between 5 and 10 minutes? Fortunately I’ve got the other laptop and have been exploring loads of forums trying to find an explanation for this. Another weird thing is that after it’s taken a long time, my 2nd hard drive is not visible from within Windows. I’ve been in the BIOS and horror of horrors, it told me the 1st hard drive needed replacing, and that it had “no data” on it! Then the weirdness increased as I exited the BIOS and the computer booted as normal – nice and fast, and there was the 2nd hard drive visible again, and obviously Windows, and all my progs and data, were safe and sound on drive C after all! I do not begin to understand any of this...

I’m phoning Kevin the computer man in the morning. My hubby’s huffing and puffing because he may have to drive me over to Plymouth with the computer if something really serious is going on, that Kevin can’t fix over the phone. If the 1st hard drive is indeed faulty, that means I’m going to have to start the whole reinstalling of Windows and all my stuff all over again...

The worst of it is, when I put Windows 7 onto my small laptop as a clean install, it went in like a dream, and the whole thing was done in an afternoon, including putting all my progs and data back. That laptop is an older computer than the big one too. I can only think that it is a hardware problem, which I probably won’t be able to sort on my own.

Not sure if I can actually go into Plymouth with my hubby because I’m expecting a parcel which I’ve got to be here to receive. Also it’s going to be pouring with rain in the morning apparently... However, if I can talk to Kevin, and then send my hubby off with the computer and a comprehensive report of what’s been happening and what I’ve done to try and correct it, that might be enough.

This has turned into a major bore. At least I’m not panicking, as I would have done a few years ago if this had happened. I’ve got all my stuff backed up, and if we can get to the bottom of this, I won’t have any problem reinstalling it all again. I'd just rather be doing something else by now!!

Computer Upgrade

After the oh-so-easy upgrade to Windows 7 that I did on my small laptop a few months ago, I was anticipating no problems doing the same on my big one. We took it in to have a bigger hard drive and some more memory installed on Tuesday, and my Windows 7 disc duly arrived the next day, and boy have I had some problems...

First of all, I was informed that my copy of Windows 7 was not genuine, and was pirated. This I found hard to believe, having got it from Staples!! I tried re-entering the activation code without the shift lock on, and the letters appeared as capitals even so, and this time it was recognised, so that was obviously what I was doing wrong there.

When it arrived, the box was broken and the 32-bit disc was floating around loose (it would be that one, as it was the one I was wanting to use! - not that it was in 32 bits, you understand, but was for a 32-bit processor rather than the 64-bit one lol!). I bunged it in, hoping it hadn't been damaged...

It installed just fine, apart from said activation problem. I've spent a couple of days reinstalling all my programs and transferring all my files back from the external hard drive, and this afternoon have had major problems with booting - sometimes it was OK and went like a dream, and other times, I've had to go through the "Startup Repair" wizard. According to one forum, you may have to use this wizard 3 times before the problem is fixed - apparently it's something to do with the MBR (Master Boot Record) having got corrupted.

As I write this, it's going through the process of "repairing disk errors" and informs me it might take over an hour to complete. This is as far as the process has ever got, so it's progress! Hopefully before I finally go to bed (it's now 2.15 a.m.) I will be able to boot it properly. If not, I've found some invaluable advice on various websites, the best being "Seven Forums" which is full of great stuff about Win7, and I don't feel too fazed about having a go at fixing it tomorrow.

I'm feeling quite chuffed really because years ago, this sort of thing would have sent me into a flat spin and making panicking phone calls to my computer chap in Plymouth, but I know I've got everything properly backed up, and there are several more options to explore before I hit the panic button.

Perhaps I should enlist Beatrice's support. After all, she is our resident Computer Queen! (see my blog posts here.)

When it is running properly, it seems to be a dream. I was keeping an eye on how full the hard drive was, recently - if it's over 75 percent full it can affect performance, and it was nudging 80, but now I've got everything back, it's registering at only 13 percent full! I've got an extra 1 GB of RAM installed too. As I said to Kevin at the computer shop, "in this life you can never be too rich, too thin, or have too much memory!!"