Moss Is An Idiot

I got excited when my mail came today — I got two memory chips (RAM, 256 Mb each raising my computer from 512 Mb to 1026 Mb or 1 Gb) in the mail that I had ordered from eBay.

Shut my computer down.  Plugged in the chips.  Booted computer.  It indicated that the BIOS was loaded, the RAM was good, looked for the drives — and rebooted.  Repeat.

I got on the phone to my favorite computer shop, and they suggested trying them one chip at a time in different slots.  No change.  I put the original chips back in the original slots, and rebooted.

SAME THING.  Now I’m getting panicky.  I called the computer shop back and said I’d bring the computer in tomorrow.  Note that I’ve been REALLY MAD at HP about this computer, and I was ready to blame HP for everything that was wrong.

I went back to my computer and plugged in my dongle (USB 2.0 to SATA/IDE With One Touch Backup), so that I could copy my just-restored documents (and I lost a lot, but I’m glad for what I got back) to my older computer.  I opened the case, plugged in the dongle, went to attach it to my HP’s hard drive…

AND DISCOVERED THAT THE DATA CABLE GOT DISCONNECTED while I was installing the RAM.  Well, hell, no wonder it wouldn’t boot — it couldn’t find the hard drive!

I reconnected the cable, rebooted — and everything works great, including the new RAM.

Some days it just doesn’t pay to think you’re smart… but if you keep plugging you get it done.

Hugs,
Me