So, my rickety old Gateway computer kept freezing up on me, and in order to use it, I would have to shut it down the bad way- tuning off The Machine without shutting down Windows. So, I reinstalled Windows. The problem got ten times worse.
So, I called tech support. After running some diagnostics, I was eventually transferred to a nice lady named Michelle. She had me go into GVScan and write zeros. Remove all the 1’s from the machine and replace them with zeros. In other words, tabula rasa.
This was a lengthy process. I called her back to learn how to make my computer a computer again, some investigaton (consisting of tearng the apartment apart) revealed that I had lost my Windows boot disk. She referred me to a website, which I accessed through my mother’s laptop, where I could download a new one. Michelle, meanwhile, went to lunch. She called back, walked me through partitioning my hard drive. After that, I was able to reinstall Windown fairly easily.
So, let’s hear it for Michelle at Gateway Tech Support.
Yay, Michelle!!!
(if the computer keeps freezing up after all that, I’m going to be very unhappy)