Last Tuesday I went RV camping in Prince William Forest Park near Dumfries, VA, I took my laptop with me and used it on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning. It had been running slow the last few days but was working OK. I used my phone’s hot spot feature as the RV campground Wi-Fi didn’t work. When I got home on Wednesday morning I hooked up the laptop and, during the first 30 to 45 seconds of bootup, the computer would just freeze up.
Now, I am not as sharp as I used to be about troubleshooting computer issues. But I’m not afraid to try various things to solve the problem. So I went through the various Windows diagnostic scenarios. I first reloaded the initial drivers. Didn’t work. I then tried going to an older version of Windows 11. No go. I tried removing all programs and reinstalling Windows. Nada. I even tried disconnecting all peripherals. Nope. Whatever I tried, the machine would just lock up during the first 30 to 45 seconds of whatever I tried to do.
I spent a half day troubleshooting. I didn’t want to pay for support at Dell because the laptop is over 7 years old. Money is an issue right now so I can’t spend a ton of money on a new laptop. I did back up some items both digitally and on paper. But I will lose a lot of data. I had an old Windows 7 laptop laying around. It is about 14 years old. I am writing this blog post on it now. I know it’s unsafe but I’m willing to risk it in the interim. I now believe that the issue is either a hard drive failure of some sort or corrupted software.
Tomorrow I will go to a nearby Best Buy Outlet store to pickup a cheap Windows 11 laptop. I realize that it will be slow as hell but what choice do I have. As soon as I get the new machine up and running, I will create the trip log for the RV trip. I did backups on the laptop but it didn’t help me when the machine kept locking up. So my advice to the reader is to make backups to either an external drive or another computer. That way, when catastophe strikes, at least you will have a chance to recover your data. Also, physically inspect your backups to make sure that everything was indeed backed up.
Mike C
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