computers suck

This new template is fun, but I'm having difficulties customizing it. The other night, it took me about two hours to figure out the code to get my clock displaying properly.

Now I want to create extra sidebar boxes for links to other sites, and for any other stuff I might want to put there. I want them to be different colors. Problem is, all the code I know is self-taught, and there's something about the structure of this new template that I'm not getting. I think it's the style sheets. There must be something about the way they work that's going over my head.

Ah well, I'll figure it out. Eventually. [sigh] The old template was so much easier.

On a positive note - I think I finally got my laptop computer running smoothly. For the first time ever! The thing's about - oh, I don't know, nine or ten months old. It crashed every time I turned around, had slow bootups and shutdowns, and several times it would not boot into Windows and I had to use Dell's PC restore feature, losing all my personal files and settings in the process. I tried all sorts of tune-ups, nothing worked. I even wiped the hard drive and did a clean install. Didn't work.

I went to Dell's tech support forums and found that a lot of Dell customers are really pissed that their computers don't work.

Dell kept telling me it was a software or malware problem. I didn't buy into that because I've never had problems on my desktop, on which I run all the same software and visit the same - reputable and safe - internet sites.

I visited tech forums, I researched Microsoft and Dell knowledge base articles, I googled the error messages I received. KB articles suggested that it might be a hard drive problem or some kind of hardware conflict. I ran all sorts of diagnostics, and was frustrated because all the hardware ran perfectly. I updated drivers. I downloaded updates. I disabled hardware deviced one by one and in groups. Nothing worked.

I even upgraded my memory to 1 gig.

Turns out it was the OS. Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005. When you install .net framework before certain other critical OS updates, some components of the registry get corrupted and everything goes haywire.

It's taken me literally months of research, and I finally happen upon this information by chance. That made me mad, because from what I've read there are LOTS of people with this problem.

On top of that, Microsoft's recommended solution did not work, and THAT is not unusal, either.

I googled again and found a blog site run by a software developer who had the same problem. He he took matters into his own hands and wrote a little program that un-registers all the MCE components and then re-registers them. I figured it was worth the risk, so I downloaded his program and ran it.

I used to avoid running all mce features because of the increased chance of a crash. Now my computer is all-around faster, and I have not seen one of the error messages that I used to see. I'm keeping my fingers crossed!