Your computer fixed!

As a person who has long worked on and with computers I have faced an endless array of computer problems and malfunctions. Hating, as I do, contact with strangers, and also hating asking for help of any kind, and distrustful as well of professional computer repair people, I have done everything in my power to solve my own computer problems. This has made me into the sort of person who can take an old, malfunctioning calculator, add a few spare components found in a gutter somewhere, write a short bit of code, and turn that device into a fully functioning powerhouse of a laptop. But, fortunately, you don't need that advanced level of expertise to fix your own computer. The truth is that every computer problem has a simple solution. The trick is merely knowing what that solution is. Luckily, I know what that simple solution is and am going to tell you right here!

Simply scroll down to find your problem. I have listed all the common ones and all the obscure ones as well, followed by detailed solutions that are simple, work flawlessly, and are written in layman's terms.

1. Computer freezing and becoming unresponsive in any way:

This is a common one and has to do with the colored bits of sand sticking in your display. Simply grasp your screen by the edge and jiggle back and forth.

If this doesn't work your screen is dusty. With a very lightly dampened cloth gently wipe down the surface of your screen. Problem solved. Look at you, you're an expert!


2. Computer smoking, sizzling, and bursting in flames:

It is always alarming when this happens, but it looks far worse than it is. Turn off the computer (using an oven mitt if necessary), unplug it, dowse it in a bucket of water, towel dry it, plug it in, and turn it on again. If it catches fire again, don't panic. Simply repeat the steps until your computer operates without bursting into flame. It is a good idea to bring in a fan to disperse the toxic fumes caused by the burnt plastics, but it is not absolutely necessary.


3. Computer very slow to respond to input and to load pages:

Your computer has a virus. I know that sounds bad, but these are easy to clean out. There are tons of free virus cleaning software products out on the web. I am not going to recommend any in order to infuriate you, but I will assure you that even though all the free software you find will come with thousands of angry people telling you about how crappy it is, they are all just kidding.


4. Computer keeps crashing to desktop, or it simply shuts down spontaneously:

Luckily this is not a hardware problem. Have you installed, or allowed any programs to download onto your computer in the past five years? Any updates to programs, any new things plugged into your computer? It will have to do with a small bug in one of these programs. Simply modify the cache bios by refunctioning the back mod operator. You will find this by going to the operations modification menu, scrolling through each program (don't worry, there may be several hundred), and scanning every sub program ending in .epg. Once you've identified the bios directory of the problem operating file, merely update it by creating a system snapshot, deleting the subdirectory, and rewriting the program with the new parameters.

Then restart your computer. If it catches fire see the relevant entry above.



5. Computer cannot access any of the good pages on the Internet:

This is neither a software nor a hardware issue. It's actually an Internet issue. The Internet is so gigantic and ungainly, filled with hucksters and junk, that it's insanely difficult to navigate. At this point you need a reliable person to tell you where the good pages are on the Internet. You cannot find them by accident. And so in that spirit I will here provide links to two of the most wonderful and engaging sites on the Internet. (If these links don't work please see "My computer is being controlled by a Totalitarian Government" below).

     A. schulzwatterson.com

     In the late 1980's Charles Schulz of Peanuts fame swapped strips with Bill Watterson of Calvin and Hobbes fame and they each drew and wrote 70 of each others' strips over a ten week period. The newspapers would not play along, finding it too confusing, and the project was scrapped. This site has archived the strips and placed them in context, but little publicity has been cast onto the very quiet project, creating a hidden Internet jewel for you and I.

     B. internettimemachineapedia.org

     This massive undertaking allows you to roll back the year as far as 500 BC to see a version of the Internet as it would have been at that time if, magically, there somehow was an Internet back then. It's silly, informative, unusual, and surprisingly thorough. Only about 60 various years from the project are (mostly) completed, but, like Wikipedia, it's an open source project that you can even personally contribute to if you want.


6. My computer is being controlled by a Totalitarian Government:

Overthrow said Government by leafleting your local cities with millions of incendiary copies of my blog post "Your computer fixed!" If this doesn't work, or takes too long a time, switch to reading books. At press time many libraries still exist.