I just experienced a computer crash that was caused when Microsoft service pack 3 tried to install on my computer. I have it set for automatic updates. Some people would say that this is my fault somehow, these are the Microsoft fanatics, although there are less and less of them every year. I can prove that Microsoft updates shouldn't be set on automatic updates, because I found out the hard way. I have had several crashes over the years because of this, but I always felt that at least I was protecting my computer from viruses and mal ware by keeping it up to date. When I look back on this, most of the crashes wiped out my programs and settings and it was just as bad as as being wiped out by a virus. Back to the statement I made that I can prove you shouldn't set your computer for automatic updates from Microsoft. Service Pack 3 clearly states that if you are using a computer with an AMD central processor you should not install it without putting in a patch first. Well I ask you, how can you know this if you are using automatic updates, all the software loads and installs? I can't help but think that this might be to discourage people from using AMD processors.

So there I was, the update had wiped out all my settings, most of my software and of course, all of the restore points. In case you don't know what a restore point is, it is a prior setting that Microsoft allows you to use to supposedly roll back to. I must say that almost every time I tried to do this, since they had this feature, it never worked correctly. Most of the time I just got a message stating that it couldn't do it after I tried. So there I was, I lost much of my future article material, but not of my software, because I always back it up to two other hard drives. I learned the hard way, that I should have backed up my article suggestions also. Oh well, there is no sense crying over spilled articles. This wipe out really caused me a lot of trouble and three days work to get everything back to normal. One of the things that happened was devices were being reported as missing that I had connected to the computer and some were part of the motherboard. Since I have a lot of experience operating and building computers, I knew that the drivers for these devices were lost and that is why they showed up as missing.

I went to the installation disks that came with my custom built computer, which I love by the way and I couldn't have built it for the price I paid and inserted the Windows recovery disc. This disk can either repair or put on a new copy of Windows XP on the hard drive. It doesn't actually have Windows on it, it is installed on a protected partition of the hard drive by the factory. The first thing I did was choose repair from the menu, that was when it came up, the most ridiculous message, it stated “insert the disc into floppy drive A”. Well folks, I haven't had a floppy drive on a computer for my last three or four computers. This left me with no choice but to try and replace windows. It did that after I had to sit there for about an hour and a half. The next thing I did was install, what was supposed to be, all the drivers for the motherboard and the devices on it from a special disk they gave me.

My top priority was getting back on the Internet. When I tried to connect, I was told that the IP address of the computer couldn't be located. I tried everything, but couldn't connect. Frustrated I reinstalled the drivers from the disk. This did absolutely no good. The next thing I tried was to go to the wireless card I had built in instead of trying to use the cable connection. Same problem. At this point I knew there was a driver problem. I checked my drivers in System/Hardware/Device Manager in the control panel and the drivers all looked okay. This was not good enough for me, because I knew that this had to be the problem. I decided to go online with a different computer and see if I could download newer versions of the drivers. Well I spent hours trying to find drivers until I got totally disgusted and bought a driver detection program that scans the computer and then finds replacement drivers. The program costs thirty dollars, but believe me, it was worth every penny. To my surprise about nine drivers were severely out of date and some were even from the year 2000.

At this point I realized what had happened. The company that built this great computer, hadn't sent me the correct drivers for replacement. A driver is a software program that allows a device to work correctly. Here I was trying to use drivers that were different than those that were driving the devices on the computer before it crashed. After about an hour of updating drivers only two things didn't operate correctly and they were the wireless card and the sound. The wireless card didn't come up with a brand name, so I didn't know what driver it needed. There is a manual work around for wireless. Most people don't know this, but if you go to the run command in the start menu and type %SystemRoot%\system32\services.msc /s, it will take you to a screen where you can then set Startup to Manual Service and click on start. This starts the wireless manually, but it has to be done each time you start up the computer. This screen is known as the WCZ screen. I never did get the wireless working correctly without using this method, but when I have more time I will.

The sound problem was solved, but I still can't understand what happened there? I reinstalled the newest Realtek sound drivers and they should have worked perfectly, but still no sound. The sound came from the chipset on the motherboard and it was from Realtek and supposedly the drivers that I downloaded worked with all Realtek products, or so they said. I checked everything. The first thing I did was check all manual devices I had, that control volume. They were set properly. The next thing that I did was to check all the volume control programs on the computer. Not only did I have the usual volume controls in Windows XP, but I also had a program that was installed from Realtek that had volume controls. Everything was fine. I decided to reboot the computer, but still the sound wouldn't work. I checked the connections and unplugged all of them and rebooted and then shut down and plugged all the connections in and success. This maneuver didn't seem to make any sense unless one of the connections was not in all of the way, but they all were.

I have a backup up computer that I use in cases such as this, to put my articles on the site. The problem with that is since it is not used much, it has to have some software updated each time I use it and that takes time. I turned it on and immediately the AVG anti-virus software wanted to update, along with Spyware Doctor and Threatfire. Then there were other software updates and of course windows updates that I now declined. It is lucky for me that I also keep my articles on two different external drives, so I was able to just plug them into the computer and work on my article. When I went to upload it, fate stepped it, the site was down for about an hour and a half. This doesn't happen very often and when it went back up, I was able to upload the last segment of the Nick Pope interview and all was right with the world.

I have learned my lesson. I can not trust Microsoft to do the right thing, therefore I am turning off automatic uploads as of now on all computers that I own. Oh how I wish Apple would make an Operating System that will power a computer and be compatible with windows programs. I am not talking about buying an Apple computer and using their emulation program, I am talking about them making a complete OS for us.