Lloyd Harvey

Aren’t computers just big shits?

Well yes and no but I write this journal as a testament to a wasted evening trying to sort a blunder I made on my PC just a few days ago.Basically, I had accidentally deleted a very important driver that was for the sound card in a “2009 start of year clean up frenzy” (that is its official name) where I was removing lots of junk from the PC I didn’t need.

The original plan for the evening was to spend it researching The Angel of Death, Psychopomps, The Necronomicon and The Collect for a piece in a series of paintings based on the Tool album 10,000 Days, whilst listening to some music, as well as gathering up lots of images of octopuses for another project. But No!

Because of my blunder I spent the evening trawling through forums looking for the link to a driver that would fix the problem. Several hours later…tears were beginning to form in my weary eyes as luck wasn’t on my side. It would seem that my computer wasn’t giving me the information I needed to find the appropriate driver and I had no idea how to get it. It looked hopeless…until I remembered my GoBack option (this was at about 2 in the morning!

Luckily when a friend built the computer for me nearly 4 years ago, he added the GoBack function as a last resort, in case I did something stupid like this. And thank Brian It worked!

The sound is back and working fine (phew) but there is a stern couple of lessons to learn here. Firstly, don’t deleted things you obviously need. Obviously… Secondly, always make sure you have a backup plan like a restore point program to take your computer back a couple of days to undo any stupid errors. And finally, always be sure that the thing your deleting is what you want to delete.

Simple I know but if you want a stress free, waste free evening that was set aside for artistic research or endeavor, don’t mess with your computer. It cost me an evening I really needed to use wisely.