My Only Means of Earning Income Just Died – Please Help If You Can

****UPDATE**** The replacement machine is fully funded! I’ll never be able to thank you all enough, so I’d better go shopping for the replacement and get to writing my ass off for you all to show my appreciation. You are all so awesome! THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!

I could not ask for better people in my life. Thank you, my darlings!

***

My darlings, I hate to ask for help, but I need it.

I’ve been making do with this underpowered, constantly-freezing Acer computer for a while now. Today, it just up and died. I tried to restart it after the cursor froze for the billionth time, and it said “preparing automatic repair” for half an hour, and is now stuck on a black screen. I can’t follow the advice to reinstall the operating system, as it is a machine with no CD ROM and therefore no recovery disk. I have no access to an alternate PC, and can’t repair it on my own.

I have no money to deal with this and no way to make money without it. I can’t write well on a tablet and certainly can’t finish and publish books on it. Applying for jobs will be difficult, if not nearly impossible, without a working computer. I have no idea what I’m going to do if this thing doesn’t manage to fix itself, and it’s not looking like it will.

So if you can help fund a repair or replacement, please use my Paypal account to donate. Even small amounts will help.

 

Thank you so much for any help you can give!

Image is a tabby kitten with blue eyes, sitting up with its paws clasped under its chin. Caption says, "Pretty please?"

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My Only Means of Earning Income Just Died – Please Help If You Can
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13 thoughts on “My Only Means of Earning Income Just Died – Please Help If You Can

  1. 3

    For what it’s worth, many computers that were premade by various companies began shipping with a separate partition on the main HDD that contains the original image of the main partition.

    That said, if your computer is that old a new one would probably be best regardless of whether there’s a partition or not.

  2. 4

    As perhaps my favourite daily read I had been pondering a donation in any case, sorry it took a crisis to get me to actually push the button. Hope you get back on track soon.

  3. 6

    If your BIOS is intact and the hardware are sufficiently intact, and you have a working USB port, you may be able to download an appropriate version of Linux to a thumb drive for free (using a borrowed computer or a library computer) and then load it onto your machine.

    Look up the local Linux user groups and issue a plea for help. Expect them to try to evangelize you, but it’s worth a try. You might even decide you like it. Linux, that is, not the evangelism. Well maybe both.

  4. 9

    Now is the time to get a new computer — holiday sales and all. I sent you a donation and hope it helps get you back up and running. I’m a Mac person myself and always buy used ones (the laptop I’m using now was bought used 4 years ago and I’ve never had any trouble with it). But get whatever suits you and will be good for you. I love your blog.

  5. blf
    12

    Yeah, the old machine isn’t necessarily completely kaput, albeit I should point out that on really old machines the BIOS does not support booting from USB. Whilst you now have the funds for a replacement (yay!), as others have pointed out, a local LUG (Linux User’s Group) may be able to help in bringing the machine back to life, as an (emergency) backup; or To recover data on the HDD (albeit there are other ways of doing this); or To help prepare it for donation to a charity which recycles older kit for use by the disadvantaged (the one I knew of, after reformatting the HDD, sends the machines to various sites in Africa for further refurbishment by local technicians and eventual distribution to schools and libraries(as I recall)).

    Should you decide to discard the old machine, please do so responsibly: (1) For your own protection, remove the HDD (if you don’t want to keep the HDD, then, literally, smash it to pieces); and (2) Strip it down (or donate to a recycling site that will properly strip it down) to recycle or dispose of the parts in an environmentally responsible manner.

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