Tech Support!

Who am I supposed to call when I need tech support? From time to time, people call me with their computer-related problems - they can't get a drive to show up in Windows, need to configure wireless, need to upgrade some hardware, etc.

But while last night was supposed to be spent making my new apartment look pretty, instead I spent it troubleshooting every piece of computer equipment I could find. Sometimes that's fun for me, because I'm a geek like that, but sometimes I just want it to be over with.

First problem: couldn't get onto the internet, either wirelessly or with a wire. Stupid router wasn't giving me an IP address in a timely fashion. Thanks. After numerous resets and downloading a new driver for my Ethernet card (?!?), it works. But only with an Ethernet cable - I think my wireless card is flaky, considering I *found* it in the basement of my last place.

So then, an hour later, the internet craps out AGAIN and I spend more time troubleshooting. Finally, I decide that it's not MY equipment that was the problem all along - it's Comcast's worthless cable modem! I go to the IP of the modem, and sure enough, it's status report says that it's stuck at the "Upstream Ranging" step - whatever that means. At this point I'm exasperated, but I decide to bite the bullet and call Comcast anyway...and I totally lucked out and got a good tech who didn't make me walk through all the BS that I've already tried (even though I know that BS works - it's amazing how you can restart your computer in front of a techie and your problems are solved!). He was so helpful, I even talked to his supervisor to put in a good word for him (this is what you do with good support people - it really does help at year-end evaluations). They're sending out a tech tomorrow.

So I don't have internet at home, for the time being. And worse yet, I now have a NEW problem. For some reason, one of my 3 internal hard drives is not showing up in Windows Device Manager. It shows up in the BIOS just fine (so I hope it's still alive!), but not in Windows. And it's got ALL my music + movies on it, which I have been too lazy to copy over to my new hard drive that I just installed a few weeks ago. So my computer has no internet, no music, no movies, no games (I don't play them). Ouch. Maybe I'll go home and work on that Excel spreadsheet I've been dreaming about...