A Man's Got To Know His Limitations

My laptop seized up a few days ago and I could not figure out how to unfreeze it. It went into hibernation mode for some reason, although the battery was not run down. I dozed off while holding it on my lap and apparently randomly passed my hand(s) over just the right key combinations to make it go catatonic.

I tried fixing it myself, Googling "laptop frozen keyboard." It's dismaying how many sites there are and how full and active they seem to be. I tried the various recommended key combinations, pressing the power button for extended time, with and without the power cord, etc. All to no avail. The consensus seemed to be either a bad keyboard or a bad hard drive and suggested pulling the battery to reset the machine. I got as far as pulling the back off before chickening out when I realized I didn't see any obvious way to reconnect the keyboard and screen cables I'd have to detach to have room to access the battery.

Yesterday, I took it to a local computer repair shop. If you totalled the ages of all the employees there they might equal mine. Fortunately, the young gentleman who repaired my machine in 30 seconds with three keystrokes also had excellent social and diplomatic skills and did not make me feel any more stupid or incompetent than I did (or am) already.

Today I brought them my ancient desktop PC for them to transfer files which I can no longer access because the CRT monitor had blown up. (And the operating system is too ancient to sync up without some intermediate steps.)

Also, the keyboard on the laptop still (again) didn't work (but only not within Windows) which I was pretty, but not entirely, sure wasn't my fault this time. For once, I was right. When he disabled the hibernate function yesterday, my repair guy accidentally disabled the keyboard as well. A couple more keystrokes and everything is back to normal. They even showed me what they did so as to ensure I never touch that part of the OS again.

Now I'm waiting to hear back from them about the transferred files. The whole episode should cost me $35.

For anyone reading this who happens to be in the neighborhood: PC Support Group. I recommend them.