Making Changes

There's good news and bad news. It's been a rough year on the writing front. I haven't gotten nearly as much done as I wanted to. Everything seems to get in the way to block, hinder or disrupt me. I've been telling myself that something has to change. I have too many demands on my time. I'm not one of those writers who makes a living from it. Writing is something I have to fit in on the side. I hope it becomes something I can do full time, but so far it isn't. However, lately I've been able to cut a couple of things out of my life or at least put them on the back burner and see what happens. So far, it's working. Just not having the stress of thinking about them so much is a load off. I may go into detail in the other blog, but bad things are happening right now. I'll get to that in a minute.

This week has been the best writing week in months. I saw some really good progress. This problem that seemed huge turned out to be easy to get past. I've been excited. It's been looking very good. Until today.

I sat down to work on the blog. I needed to step away from the computer for about 20 minutes. When I got back, I was looking at a Windows 10 blue screen of death. I was able to update Windows this week after fixing the compatibility problem I had. I suspect Windows 10 caused the crash, but I can't prove it. I tried to reboot, and nothing happened. I shut everything down and did a cold restart. The machine starts up but never seems to get to POST. Basically, it's dead, and I don't know why. I wasn't doing anything on it. It was just sitting there waiting for me to get back. The glaring difference between this week and last week is Windows 10. I suspect the motherboard is the problem, but I'm going to test the video card and the memory just in case.

I hadn't backed up what I've accomplished this week. If it turns out to be the hard drive, which it doesn't appear to be, then that would be bad. Everything is on the hard drive. I have my writing backed up to USB but not anything from this week.

What can I do? Test the video card and memory and go from there. The PC doesn't appear get to the point of trying to use them, though, which makes me think motherboard. But if it was fried, it wouldn't do anything at all, and it does at least power on. I really need a new computer, but I'm not rich. I got the one I've been using in a sale to replace my ancient Pentium 4. It was a leased business computer with Windows 7 Pro on it, which is how I was able to get Windows 10.
What if it's the motherboard? I can order another one. It wasn't a new computer. It should be fairly cheap, if I can find one just like it. If I got another one, and it doesn't fix the problem(like it was the CPU that was fried and not the motherboard), then things might be bad. CPUs are more expensive, and I can't throw money away buying part after part.

So, I might try to post updates to Twitter @messengerofyesh, but I don't know. I'm not a big tweeter. If something good happens, I'll post a happy dance blog ASAP.