I was sitting in my Psychology of Happiness class when out of nowhere my screen went black. Not thinking anything of it, I tried to wake up my computer by moving my cursor and nothing happened, so I tried powering it back on. It lingered for a moment, doing the usual stuff computers do, when a concerning message appeared. Little did I know, the tiny message on the very bottom of the screen would leave me without a computer for a few weeks.
I had tried all of the obvious things, rebooted the computer, gave it a few minutes and let it cool down, and essentially anything else I could think of. Quickly it became a spectacle as it flashed through the giant blue screen of doom, opening windows of code that I couldn’t dream of understanding, leaving me utterly confused and hopeless. In that class I knew a few people who were computer science and cyber security majors so I showed it to them. Let’s just say that hearing the “hmmm… interesting” did not settle my fears.
For some background, I am a Mechanical Engineering major, and just like many others, I knew I was going to need a beefy computer. The second I learned about engineering in ninth grade, I immediately started saving for one. In order to buy this computer, I had researched for months on end and saved for even longer. When my computer decided that it didn’t feel like doing much, it was a major punch to the gut.
I started freaking out. What was I going to do? I had assignments due and no time with upcoming midterms. I called Lenovo customer service and was given one of many fixes to try. Long story short, it didn’t work. So I called again and waited for their other solution to come in the mail. The thumb drive they sent me to fix the problem, unsurprisingly, didn’t work either.
At this point I was fed up. I had very luckily been able to get a loaner from the school for the time being, but you could not actually click on the track pad which became a bit of a nuisance. All I wanted was for mine to work. So, several weeks in with no hope, I had moved all of my files to the loaner, still going back and forth with customer support.
Then Family Day rolls around and luckily, one of my friends has a dad that is actually a tech wiz. Turns out Stevens is also his alma mater, and he is an electrical engineer with his master’s in computer science. He very kindly spent the majority of Family Day, with his family in a dorm room, trying to fix his daughter’s friend’s laptop. We were there for five hours, and he completely solved the problem. Apparently, my windows files were corrupted, and Lenovo does not make it very easy to get them back. He figured out a way to download all the software for free and fix everything that had been wrong with my computer. I am now sitting here, over the moon, as I finally get to use my computer again.
Moral of the story, keep a thumb drive with windows software in case your computer decides it’s not feeling it today. That and thank you very much to the Kostakis family.
