Stay Tuned for an awesome story about my last week. But, most importantly I will be announcing a change in posting schedules for my blog… but do enjoy my painful story ahead 😊
MANNNN what a stressful week it has been. Between work and everything, I have just flat out not been able to write for this blog. The number 1 reason… *looks back at the last blog post*… my computer completely bit the bullet.
After replacing and testing everything with my RAM, I KEPT getting blue screens. This time related to a network driver… LIKE HUH?!?
I searched and I searched and I searched, when I wasn’t blue screening, for an answer. No answer. Every network driver I saw was at least 2 years old… So how does that make any sense?
I deleted VPNs, I deleted VM instances… Nothing.
Finally, I decided… I’m going to wipe it.
Wiping my Computer
Just like any professional, after a while its too costly to try and find so we just say, wipe it. People might give me flack… “Aren’t you in tech? and you STILL couldn’t fix your computer”
“GUYS I DON’T WORK WITH COMPUTERS! I HATE THEM JUST AS MUCH AS EVERYONE ELSE!” 😊
But, in all seriousness, at times it just makes sense to cut your losses and start over.
I copied all the data I cared about to my network share, created a new Windows 11 boot drive, and wiped my hard drive.
Windows Boot Drive
So I opted to use a boot drive because I wanted to granularly ensure I was only installing windows on the one hard drive and no others.
Boy, I should have just used the built in recovery methods…
I created the boot drive through windows media creation tool like a good boy. Go to start the installation. Fail.
Weird…
Try again. Fail.
Well, now what? I don’t have a good windows machine to recreate this USB drive. So, I pull out my handy dandy Linux laptop and thought “Okay ill do it the hard way then” I had an old ISO that I pulled a couple of years back for Windows 11 (Which was another problem, stand by)
I use BalenaEtcher for boot drives, go to create the image… Balena says it doesn’t know how to write Windows Boot drives.. great… “”I’ll use Rufus, I’ve used Rufus before” not on linux BUDDY!
Old Laptop Anyone?
Luckily, I still have an old laptop from 2013 that has windows on it. Its an old Toshiba Satellite with 6 gb of RAM that’s fans don’t work.
What could go wrong?!
After about an hour of trying to get the best woken up and functional, I download Rufus and try to write the iso to my drive.
An hour later. BOOM. New usb boot drive. Plug it in. Start the process. “Can’t find appropriate drivers”… Off to ChatGPT because I don’t know what that means. Says that if it doesn’t have the drivers it wont be able to find my hard drives…. FANTASTIC.
“well just use the media creation tool for windows 11” Yeah, but then I will be stuck using the new 24H2 and well… gross.
24H2 vs 23H2
So for those that don’t know, Windows 11 was basically just a reskin of the Windows 10 environment until 24H2 (supposedly, like I said I don’t know computers.) I also game on this PC so when I looked at the bugs it basically breaks gaming. So I was REALLY trying to avoid using 24H2 until the very last moment. I wanted 23H2 because I know it works and it didn’t bug out on me.
Using 24H2
At this point its been 5 hours of trying to get this computer working again. Its late. I want to cry… you know how it goes.
I just bit the bullet and used the windows media creation tool for 24H2 and said “I need a computer that works… I will just suffer”
OH NO SUCKA. My usb that I have been using. Fails. Luckily it failed during the media creation process and not when I was installing windows… but still. COULD ANYTHING ELSE GO WRONG!?
I have been using super cheap USBs so that’s probably why, so I grabbed a good PNY usb not the off brand PNY “PNSTAWS” and created the media.
Victory… Hopefully?
So my PC is now on 24H2 and so far so good. No blue screens which is REALLY what I wanted. I just needed a computer. I can’t go another week without one while trying to start an online presence for myself.
I wiped about 700 gbs off my hard drive so at least now I have some more local storage… A good fresh start for everyone 😊
I game on Friday so we will if I experience any issues. There were some bug fixes in the most recent update so lets hope those do well.
Final thoughts
Windows sucks. If Linux was better for gaming, I would never touch Windows again. Like why do I NEED a Windows product to build a Windows Boot Drive? You would think you would want to make it EASIER to install your product so that users would USE IT???!?!?
As I write this in word… on my windows pc… I shake my head in disgust. “IT’S A TRAP!” is all I can think of at this point. But, we must bow to the Microsoft overlords…
Make Windows easier please… Jeeze.
Schedule Changes
Also want to say that I will be taking a step back from the blogging and focusing more on the youtube portion of my travels and less on the blog. The blog is fun don’t get me wrong, and I don’t have to sit in front of a camera and talk like a crazy. But, long term people go for the youtube content and not the blogging. I going to blog still, but the focus will be on bringing the best and educational content to the youtube.
I am at least going to continue to post once a week for the foreseeable future!
PLEASE SUBCRIBE TO THE YOUTUBE 😊
Back to installing things that I forgot all about.
Stay Curious. Stay Healthy!
Joe
Remember to follow us on the following socials:
Leave a Reply