Saturday, April 12, 2014

I Am So Close To Giving Up On Windows Completely

My notebook is again powering itself off rather randomly, and running incredibly slowly the rest of the time.  No error message -- it just shuts down suddenly.

UPDATE: I was planning to get off Thunderbird for what they did to Brendan Eich, but I have been having email problems since Thursday night.  I thought it might be corruption in Thunderbird directories -- but it now appears to be a change in mail servers at Hostrocket.  One and only one account locks up when trying to download emails -- and that is my primary personal account.  All others work fine.

In any case, to verify the source of the problem, I am now using Windows Live Mail.  Thunderbird will go away as soon as I manage to import all my history and folders.

5 comments:

  1. Since this is either hardware or software (or some combination) divide and conquer. Boot in safe mode and run Malwarebyte's antimalware app. Make sure you install only the free version. Likely it will find something even if it is only adware. Get rid of it all using the antimalware's process. Then do it all again. The worst case I have seen took three cycles before everything was located and removed. If that finds nothing, think possible hardware or interaction. Find a Linux distro and boot from a thumb drive or CD. If the problem persists it is almost surely hardware. Then you have to decide if troubleshooting the hardware is worth the effort.

    Vic

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  2. I was having issues with the cooling on mine. Blew out the fan with one of those canned air things, and it's been better, hasn't just quit running suddenly since then.

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  3. You can use UNetbootin to install a Linux Live CD to a USB stick (it will do the download or you can supply an ISO for it). It won't overwrite files (unless they happen to coincide with the OS file names), so you could potentially keep old files on the stick (but back up files to be safe).

    I wouldn't recommend Macs. I've had terrible trouble with the damn things.

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  4. If you are overheating due to clogged vents switching OSes won't help.

    Having said that, a nice 2GB-4GB stick running a LiveUSB version of Linux makes a nice way to practice using it (although I believe you're already familiar.)

    I have been using Mint 16 for the last week or so at home on a temporary basis and mostly like it, once I added Chrome and removed Firefox. But I use webmail these days because I'm lazy, so I don't have any suggestsions for a replacement for Thunderbird.

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