First, some more computer woes. I recently mentioned how I’d tried speeding up my computer by uninstalling a lot of software. Shortly after that I noticed my DVD-ROM and CD-ROM drives were no longer being recognized by Windows XP. The System Control Panel informed me that “Windows successfully loaded the device driver for this hardware but cannot find the hardware device. (Code 41).” I finally got fed up enough to research this yesterday, and I found out that this is supposedly a “known problem” brought about by removing Easy CD Creator or DirectCD. I have neither of these programs, so that did not explain the situation — but it’s interesting: if you remove some CD-ROM software, Windows removes the drive along with it. Nice. Anyway, I followed Microsoft’s instructions (found on this page, FYI) and this did solve the problem. (I was only able to find “LowerFilters” and nothing about “UpperFilters”, but it still worked.) Maybe this can be of use to you.My other tale of woe is web-related. I discovered by accident that my Bitter Old Man site was completely down today. I did a WhoIs search just to verify the IP, in case I wanted to ping it, and along the way I discovered that the domain registration had ended yesterday! Nice of my hosting service to remind me to renew. For a terrifying while I believed this meant my site was gone for good, taking with it all the work I’d done last week. (All three hundred DVD reviews — the ones I’d just moved over there last week — would be totally lost now, since I’d deleted them from here already.)
But this tale of woe also has a happy ending. It turns out I had renewed the service contract with my host, but had not renewed my domain registration. So all my files were still intact, and accessible through the same IP address. I renewed the Bitter Old Man name early this afternoon, and I see the domain is once again up and active.
Phew!
May your tales of woe end as happily too.
