Help Windows 7 Ate My Vista Twitter Laptop

Okay, from the title as you can guess this is going to be a cautionary tale, one you should perhaps heed. I should know better about being bleeding edge but last night I did something really, really stupid: I made the dreadful mistake of installing Windows 7 on perfectly good Compaq Vista laptop. It was so shiny and new I just had to take a peek and I had a perfectly good candidate to try the new release. Now I should tell you that I have two machines running Vista, that much maligned operating system that I have never had a serious problem with.

Wait, that can’t be right? Doesn’t Vista blow as per the Internet and popular media? No, if you threw enough memory I found it to be the best performing Windows to date (back off Mac boys) and I never experienced a BSD to date that I can recall on the almost two year old Quad processor desktop. Okay, the laptop had a couple of weird BSDs with the closing of its lid but those disappeared after an update and it too has also been running great.

Anyway I got my Windows 7 CD yesterday and for kicks and giggles I sacrificed my new HP Compaq CQ60-420 that ran Vista for the install. That wasn’t a critical production machine, I use it mostly for Word, Twitter and Bing searches,  so I didn’t give a second thought about the decision. After all, I knew I could lose everything on the laptop and still survive using my desktop. I popped it into the DVD drive and I answered three question and we off to the install. This was not a wipe and clean install but a true upgrade and I did have apps and data on the laptop. The upgrade took two and half hours with 3 reboots, no big deal and little interaction on my part other than waiting for a pot to boil. It started up after the third reboot and all looked well as I brought up a number of key applications including IE and Firefox. So far so good, right?

With my laptop I like to use a second external monitor and I noticed that I didn’t have two separate screens going and that the external monitor was just a mirror of the laptop. I had already created a scheme to support two monitors and I blithely right click the desktop to get to my scheme. Opps! New dialog box and worse none of my schemes made it through the upgrade. In fact Windows 7 had no clue what external monitor I had attached. Not a good sign since I had a very exotic Acer 22 inch LCD monitor attached (that’s a joke, there’s nothing exotic they are just cheap and work). Okay, I’ll tackle that in the morning after all how hard is it to create a new scheme.

Morning came and I booted the laptop up, signed in and went about having my crappy breakfast. I returned to the laptop and it was busily doing something and I was thinking that screwball indexing was it again. No problem, right click on the desktop and let’s create that new monitor scheme. Nothing. Tried again but more nothing. One more click and the desktop faded and a message was given about Windows Explorer having a heart attack. Not good!

Rebooted the computer and more of the same behavior. Yikes! My best guess it’s a video driver issue with the laptop. I went to the HP site and downloaded their Driver Robot. Whoa, not HP’s but some crapware or malware that is guaranteed to mess fubar your PC.  Be sure to go to the HP site and get the new drivers.  Let’s see if that addresses the issue.

So you ask why install Windows 7? It’s now and wow, shiny and new plus I’m in the business. I should add that I am not your average noob when it comes to computers. People who follow or stumble upon the blog know I am also a writer of a science fiction adventure trilogy called Flores Girl. Like most writers with the exception of Rollins and Stephen King, I support myself with a second paying job. In fact, for the past 20 years I have been a computer geek selling, marketing, developing and installing personal computers of the Windows persuasion to thousand of customers.

Besides my main source of income like most authors so I can afford shelter for my family I also wear a marketing hat for my novel. Publishers do less and less for authors and we novice authors really have to pickup the slack. Like most writers I have a novel web site, blog and I create the pages including the art work for everything. I ineffectively use a rendering program called Poser to create the Flores Girl Characters and I have created scenes from the next novel to be released with Sequel to Hell with Heroes. The Quad Core PC I mentioned earlier is my production machine and it does my rendering and runs my Photoshop.

The laptop is used as a portable computer to write the novel. It’s a HP Compaq CQ60-420, an inexpensive but not a cheap laptop. I got a deal for $349 and it replaces my 4 year old Compaq laptop that I used to write. That oldie still runs and is getting a second life with one of the kids so I had high hope for this laptop that is until I installed Windows 7 on it.

I’ll keep you updated with my ongoing travails regarding Windows 7. Hopefully, it’s just a video driver issue and not the beginning of some bizarre computer odyssey. My Ubuntu machine is looking good now and I can hear the Mac fan boys laughing right now!

Update:

10/28 – All is well in the world, just as I was ready to uninstall Windows 7 I did what I should have done right from the start and I went to the HP  site and install an updated video driver for Windows.  Its running fine now and I’ll give you some updates.

10/29 – Oops spoke too soon,  the Windows Explorer bug resurfaced and it continues to crash when it wants.  It runs fast, I just can’t get to the desktop.  Normally I don’t upgrade but stick with the original OS the computer came with which was easy to when XP had its 8 year run.  These are the pitfalls with an upgrade.   I know get a Mac!

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait… Rank: wait… Traffic: wait… Price: wait… C: wait…

FloresGirl Twitter Supsended, A Victim of Spatwitters and twimmers

I could never find a good use for Twitter. Really, are we that insecure we have to be connected to the world 24×7? As a writer I don’t mind being alone nor do I hesitate to talk to myself when alone, after all, it’s the one way I guarantee at least one intelligent conversation during the course of the day. But then I thought why not use Twitter to highlight some of the more pithy comments from Flores Girl. I have been doing so since May and have a garnered a few followers and a lot more of the stupid spammers I called Spatwitters or twimmers! I want to give away book and they want to sell me their moronic services.

On Friday I got a ton of followers in a two hours spam, you got it Spatwitters at work selling me new get rich schemes, Internet marketing secrets, SEO and other crap I don’t much care about. So I was away on vacation in Montauk when this all happened. Guess what happen? The mental giants at Twitter suspended my account! Can you imagine getting your email blocked because you received too much spam and you did everything you could to protect yourself? Amazing! Here is my reply to Twitter:

Wait a second, I get spatwitted (Twitter spammed) on Friday and you suspend my account? What prescription meds do you people take at Twitter? I don’t get it? Go after the idiot spammers in particular the BS like http://socialmediaclicks.com. They flooded my account with over 35 followers, all pushing http://socialmediaclicks.com, while I was away on vacation. I don’t have all day to check the veracity of who is following my novel particularly when I am away. Block their idiot accounts not mine otherwise Web 2.0 is going to look like that same crap we have on Web 1.0! This is great fodder for my blog, thanks nitwits!

I will keep you posted about twimmers and Twitter’s inadequate response to this serious threat to the viability of their platform.

Flores Girl Twitter Account

Bernie Madoff’s Top Ten Prison To Do List

Now that Bernie Madoff’s is off to prison for a 150 or so years and getting his first taste of true prison cuisine I thought I would help Bernie out with his new prison to do list. So here are my top ten suggested To Do’s for Bernie:

10. Become pen pals with Martha Stewart and learn from her how to accessorize those adorable prison jumpers. Also, Martha’s handy tips on how to hide a shiv in a frosted layer cake are good too but that’s, of course, assuming Bernie didn’t screw her as well.

9. Get out those handwritten personalized holiday thank you notes to your clients that Bernie has been dying to do for years. While he’s at it, he can also send thank you notes to the 400 or so investigators at the S.E.C. for blithely ignoring his audacious Ponzi scheme for 13 years and the subsequent loss of $65 billion dollars.

8. Learn speed is more important than cleanliness when taking your showers in prison and that being old and wrinkly is no reason to excuse yourself from a quick shower tryst.

7. After learning the shower lesson above Bernie can become a Born-Again Christian and repent his sins. Failing acceptance by Born-Again’s and any personal protection they can afford him, he can then join the Aryan Nation and get some really radical prison tats.

6. If that doesn’t work Bernie can get big fast, I mean really fast or he can organize a prison cigarette investment fund. Actually, he’s better off getting big fast! Think like A-Rod and have your cousin visit you in jail!

5. Failing that, Bernie can petition the prison system and tell officials that he is a woman trapped in a man’s body and demand that the taxpayers pay for his sex change operation as an accommodation to his new cell mate Bubba. Again, Martha maybe handy for giving you a few, quick prison makeup tips.

4. Become a leading advocate for prison inmate rights and demand the availability of Viagra for all conjugal visits. Might one to explore this one before pursuing item 5, however.

3. Adding to a growing list of prisoner rights perhaps Bernie can twitter to his following some of his ongoing jail house experiences. In response to “what are you doing?” Bernie can bang out, “Oh no, Bubba’s got that gleam in his eye again, I got to be…,” while hoping he is keeping his tweet under 140 characters. Actually, I can do a whole column on that!

2. He can vow to live an additional 50 years so that when Bernie’s a 125 he can be paroled after the Obama budget finally bankrupts the entire country and the prison system.

And last but not least:

1. Bernie can finally write that tell all book about personal financial investment he has had a hankering to do. Failing success on the NY Times Best Seller list, he can then write a sequel called the ultimate “Dummies Book on Ponzi Schemes”. It will become the must read book for the S.E.C. and all law enforcement agents.

Actually, since Bernie has all this time on his hands he can also download my free eBook novel Flores Girl: The Children God Forgot. Bernie, it is truly a free book novel and a fun read if I do say so myself.

And by all means feel free to add your own Bernie to do’s for this list. Maybe I’ll put together a second list with your suggestions!