Laptops that go "woofy berserk"

Oh, me! Oh, my! My laptop has gone "woofy berserk."

Monday night I thought everything was fine. Silly me.

Tuesday, I was back to not having DSL service. I reinstalled the Bell South DSL disc and, at least, got that to working again.

I then called the Netgear support center and went through a complex set of steps that Rudolf Nureyev could not have remembered. We reinstalled the WGT624 router, then moved on to reinstall the WG511T wireless card. At the end everything worked fine.

But then yesterday, I was back to zero. I tried to do several recovery processes to a previous point, but not a one would work. I finally resorted to the extreme measure of doing a recovery to the original setting of the C drive.

That actually worked. But it's like you've just started your computer for the first time. And gads does the installation process try to put so much unnecessary software on your software.

The first thing I did was to go in search of Netscape which has always been my browser of choice. I opted for the newest version - Netscape 8. Which, of course, has it's own set of pecularities. No the least of which is that it does not come with a mail client. For that I had to refer back to Netscape 7.02.

If you have two mail systems on your computer, you can receive mail at either one. BUT you can only send mail via a single mail client. Fortunately, I remembereed how to set that up from when I first had DSL.

However, I forgot about the fact that I'd loose all my saved e-mail. Someone send me a wonderful letter the other day about dealing with an elderly parent, I do hope they will reply again.

I then tried to conjure up some of the mucho bookmarks I'd saved, but not backed up, under Netscape. I'm not that much concerned about their immediate absence, because the useful ones will slowly come back to me. And there's a certain fun in coming across new sites.

Next, I realized I needed an FTP program. I downloaded a couple of free ones, but they didn't work according to the settings on the support page at my ISP. I finally called and discovered the info had been changed but not updated on the web page.

Lastly, I reinstalled Zone Alarm. Again everything seemed to work.

This afternoon, I was back to no DSL connection. I uninstalled Zone Alarm. Restored the system to last night. Reinstalled the DSL connection. Reworked the FTP client. And returned Zone Alarm.

I'd been disconnecting the cables at the end of the day, but tonight I'm going to leave everything in place and see what happens. I've wondered a couple of times if disconnecting the DSL cable somehow causes the modem to loose its connection.

Maybe tomorrow, the world will be a brighter happier place. Where the land is full of lollipops and laptops that work.

PAX!