Bricked

Housekeeping

On Monday morning, just as I was starting a fresh round of posts, the new ASUS laptop bricked.  Black screen, no response to the power switch.  Tested the power cord (I have a spare), but nothing.

So I took it to the Geek Squad, who took two days to tell me that the problem was not the power cord.  And I was out of town for those two days on personal business, which is why I only got this thing back in motion last night.

Aaargh.  So now I’ll probably have to send the fucking brand broken new laptop to the ASUS service center or some damn place, while I revive the old HP and press it back into service one more time — you remember, the old machine held together with duct tape, with the touchpad masked with cardboard and the letter “o” which doesn’t always respond to a finger’s touch.

Hello, Windows 10 my old friend.

Of course, I don’t know what the real reason for the bricking can be — broken motherboard, some other problem from a cause I know not what, it will all be revealed at some point.

Fortunately, all my data is backed up, but there is a distinct possibility that I’ll have to rebuild all the apps and programs and such from scratch, as I did when the ASUS was fresh out of the box.

Fuck.

Bear with me while I go through the travails of the modern digital world, again.

Posting may be light for a few days, I’m sorry.

9 comments

  1. Take your time, my friend. I’m just grateful you keep at it and don’t just throw in the towel! This and coffee is how I start each day, my life would be less full without it. Well wait. No apology needed.

  2. Whats yer send Kim stuff addy? I happen to have a few excess near bulletproof laptops of the type lugged through 57 countries over time, happy yo send you one ot if tou wat a desktop. have them too,

  3. Kim, a suggestion before you send it off. Either let the battery run all the way down or open the back and disconnect and then reconnect the battery from the motherboard. I have had a similar issue with 2 ASUS laptops and this resolved each. Apparently there is some kind of analog latch issue in the charging circuit of them.

    1. Exactly what I was going to suggest. I had the same problem and found the same solution by accident.

      I cursed, put the thing on a shelf, procrastinated for 3 months and used my desktop. When I decided to give it one last try, I plugged in the power cable for 20 minutes, opened it and the screen came up.

  5. Kim,

    I moved on from Windows more than 10 years ago, got my first Chromebook and never looked back.

    My final day with Windows, I wasted an entire afternoon on the phone while a Microsoft rep in India controlled my computer and tried to fix it.

    You can do everything with a $200 Chromebook, and it is fully supported and automatically updated for 5 years.

    I’m on my second Chromebook, it saves time and money, and it always works.

    Also, the charged battery lasts more than 12 hours.

    Harry

  6. My vote is simply to abandon computers and the internet entirely. I don’t see that, on balance, they have been good for our society at all.

    I’m now counting down the months until I can do just that . . . .

    (Hello isolated compound, my old friend)

Comments are closed.