When I went to bed last night, I felt pretty good. My family was in good spirits. I was able to complete Fallout 3: Mothership Zeta and thought about what would be next-Ghostbusters or replay Fallout 3 as an evil entity. I had played Battlefield 1943 for 45 minutes and in last battle, before I quit, I teamed up with another player in a tank unit and we blasted about until the very end, when we were taken out by a aerial attack. I accumulated my highest point total to date (311points) with only one kill. That driver really knew what he or she was doing. I wish I had gotten that persons tag to see if we could link up again. The only weird thing occurred later, as I booted up my netbook. I was queried by Windows about linking up with another wifi LAN. I was confused but didn’t think about it as I continued. I wanted to check on the progress of the Xbox that was in for repair. That results was positive. It was actually on the road back to me (ETA 13 Aug 09). Another reason for feeling good as I took the dog before retiring for the evening.
So I wake up, rested and complete my morning routine. My wife leaves the house and I sit down to have breakfast and check the Internet’s offerings. The machine starts up and the little icons in the ‘start bar’ begin loading up. All of a sudden the network links appear with a small red x beneath each icon. “Huh? Oh Crap!,” is muttered (really it was more like “Whaa? S&*$!!). “What did I do wrong?“ If you’re a Windows user, you’ve, at some point in time, uttered that statement. If you are new to Windows you probably will uttered that phrase. I haven’t been involved with Windows for awhile, but I remember my students and my fellow teachers uttering those words. It took me a few attempts at resolving the problem before I got things working again.
Before I go into a description of what I did, I just want to say that if you had restore disks get them ready. If you have a utility to create restore disks, create those disks before you do anything. I am so glad I did.
It took me a few minutes to remember some of the trouble shooting steps. The first thing that I wondered about was the request to link up the other network. Did I do that? If I did, then run the antiviral software. Done and none! Was it a registry issue? I ran the registry fix application-18 errors. Fixed and no change (other that the Toshiba HDD protection disappears). Now I have to zero in the specific apps related to the network connection. Putting the cursor over them will give you a status condition. If you left click on the icon, you will open an access window that will allow you to perform operations related to that particular system function. If you right click on the icon a list of operations appear. It is similar to the access window, but with additional operations that you can perform. One of them might be ‘repair’. When that option appears click on it. I did and after an automated process took place, Windows inform me that it was unable to complete this and I should check with the person who set up the network to address this issue (that’s me-I’m so lucky). Back to the icon with the repair option, another right click, and see if an “Open Network Connections” option is available. I clicked on it and it opens the Network Connections window. I tried the Network Troubleshooter and wound my way through its steps. Somewhere in the operations that ensued I was directed to remove corrupted files related to the wireless card and reinstall those drivers. Guess what this requires-those restore disks that I setup right after I bought the machine. So now we come to the part where I decide to take a short cut. I put the restore disk into the DVD player that I’ve attached and run the driver restore application, reinstalling the drivers for my wireless card after choosing the overwrite option, figuring that that will get rid of the corrupted files. Restoration complete restart the computer, and . . . no network connection!
You know, I should know better. Time after time, I’ve taken a shortcut with Windows. Some times it works, but most of the time it doesn’t work. I’ll learn, eventually. Chalk this one up to not using Windows for a while.
Back to the fix. I went back to the control panel, accessing it through the start button. I clicked on the “Add or Remove Programs” link. And proceeded to first remove the corrupted drivers for my wireless network card and then added the needed drivers, which required a reboot of the machine. Viola, as the little icons reappeared, I was asked which network I wanted to join and I was back in business again. Hot Dog!
I’m glad that the problem was resolved, but what happened in the first place. This is an issue that has always bugged me about Windows (less with Macs), it seems so fragile. Once this has happens a few times, you feel very vulnerable and justifiably so. Any new operation (adding a new peripheral, running a utility) that is done to the system leaves you wondering if this will trigger a some kind of corruption to driver. After a while, you begin to feel comfortable with the system again (letting your guard down), and Wham!, it happens again. I don’t know if this is right. I don’t feel that it is right. I wonder how the creators of the operating system and any external or internal additions feel. I don’t think they want to cause problems. Apple handled it, to a greater extent, by a having a very structured closed architecture, that requires developers to plug things in just so. Windows, in its desire to allow the greatest amount of access to developers, created a very open structure that permitted a great degree of flexibly in approaching software solutions. But this means that conflicts can occur when two developers lay claim to the same resource in the operating system and the conflict resolving ability that is built into the system can’t handle those claims.
I’m glad I’m familiar with both systems. It has helped at work and at home. I just wish I could deal with Windows issues as easily as I’ve dealt with most of my Mac issues (note: most not all).
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