Nic’s blog

I write about building businesses, failing and building a life, not a legacy.

Nic Haralambous Nic Haralambous

Never Reformat Your HardDrive...Ever

I decided to reformat my Mecer DL70 yesterday. Public holiday I thought, good time to get it done I thought, Quick and easy I thought. I was wrong. So wrong.First I reformatted the HDD, that was OK, it's not a hard thing to do. Then the trouble started. The keyboard wasn't working. This meant that I couldn't enter the product key to activate and continue installing Windows. Joy, Windows.Then panic stations kicked in, big time. I freaked, found another Windows installation disk, reformatted HDD again and attempted another install. Not so much. Same issue, no keyboard action, no keys outputting anything on the screen, no nadda. Then I did what any freaked out person would do in this situation, call for help. So I did, I called the Vin (not Vin Diesel). Mr Maher has some air of solution about him. It seems to me that he can solve a problem just by hearing what it is, no action involved. At 19:30 last night the Vin answered his phone, spoke some shit to me for a bit and BAM the keyboard was fixed. Bastard, he didn't even have to tell me to do anything constructive and he had fixed the stupid keyboard.So hurdle #1 was overcome. Then hurdle #2 has stamped it's authority and prowess. I have no drivers, for anything, no modem, wireless, printer, etc etc etc. Nothing. This sucks. I was told to download them, how pray tell me? I cannot get on to the internet. I am at a loss.I am now making use of my mother's laptop to write this post and get some work done. I will then be heading off to the Mac shop in Sandton City to make my purchases I reckon. They tell me not to do it, they tell me to save my money, screw it, money is a commodity, I will have more of it by the end of the month!!

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Nic Haralambous Nic Haralambous

The Fan, The Fan

I recently (5/6 Months ago) purchased a brand-spanking-new Mecer Laptop. Top of the range, all the specs are present that any user would need (too many, too boring to go through one by one just trust me, they're all there).Everyone is aware of the Sony Battery debacle; explosions, fire, mini nuclear explosions just about. "Cool," I thought, "this could never happen to me." And it hasn't... yet. My keypad started heating, the fan became clearly audible (not in that "is it on, can I really hear it" sort of way) to the extent that it startled me when I started up the laptop. Now this combined with heat issue have started me worrying about the state of my fairly new laptop.I am so concerned that I will lose everything that tonight I am backing up all my usefull stuff (usefull is a loose term that is very relative at this point) to my external hard drive. Thank however is up there for these little beauts.Then tomorrow I am off to Midrand to get my sick puppy looked at and hopefully fixed. What admin, what a mess, what fuss.

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