I have a problem, which showed itself in a bad way last night. I can’t help tinkering with computers. I need help.
Rachel had a meeting with My Sisters Closet after work, so I was home by myself until about 8:30. Because of the current issues with our main computer, we only have the laptop right now. When we purchased the laptop it came with Windows Vista Home Basic pre-installed. Neither of us had any experience with this new (at the time) operating system.
After a day or so of tinkering and trying to figure it out, Rachel decided that she wanted XP on it. I was fine with this, as she was going to be the main user of the computer anyway. I wiped the hard drive and put a clean install of XP Pro on it. Not til later would I realize that doing this would void the warranty on the machine.
I went on a hunt for drivers for the many devices a new laptop has and came up short. When I contacted dell for help, that is when I found out about a interesting clause. If you downgrade the OS on a machine purchased from them, all support is rendered void.
At first I didn’t care at all. Since issues have occurred with my other machine, I’ve become somewhat paranoid. I wanted to get the computer reverted to it’s original state. I contacted Dell again, and they sent me a set of discs that actually re-imaged the machine to it’s original factory state.
Rachel and I had talked about this, she was very hesitant about the change. Since I have some experience with Vista under my belt now, I feel much more comfortable with it, if you didn’t know it’s just XP of a different color.
When Rachel arrived home last night, I was about an hour away from finishing this changeover. She was furious and actually made me think for a minute that she was packing up to move out or something. Over the years I have done several things to computers that have hurt her. I deleted (on accident) a majority of her papers for her masters degree and other various files that were important to her.
The sad part is that I do this with out even thinking about it, like it’s just a everyday sort of thing. The whole time I was doing this, I thought she would be happy when she got home.
I was wrong.