Computer Crash

     After suffering a rash of computer crashes Saturday I finally called the Geek Squad and let them remote into my laptop. It took a couple of hours to do whatever they did and things seemed to be OK for awhile, but Sunday morning it was acting up again so I did another remote session. When I got home a couple of hours later I still had some issues and signed on again. This time the agent seemed to have a better handle on what the issue was and he advised me to do some kind of online re-install of Windows 8 which I did. The laptop is working fine now but...what the agent didn't tell me was that the re-install wiped out most of the programs I use the most: Word and Excel, my paint program, Adobe, WinDjView, Dropbox, my Houdini 2 engine and Fritz 12.
     I can re-install everything except for Microsoft Office, but that's OK, I guess...I am using Open Office which works well enough for my purposes. Houdini 2 can't be re-installed because I no longer have the activation code that came with it. Oh, well...it's now been surpassed in strength by Komodo and Stockfish anyway. Also, the activation code to Fritz 12 is missing. I have the CD, but no case or code...I salvaged the CD from when our house flooded last May, but the case and code are gone. Somehow Fritz runs, but at startup it keeps asking for an activation code; I just click cancel, it tells me the activation code is invalid then starts right up. So far it seems to be working. The other option is to use Aquarium 2012 which was unaffected, but I just can't seem to get used to it...that happens when you get old; you don't want to change from familiar things.

Update on Fritz (11-26): I send a request to Chessbase explaining the situation and asked them if they would supply me with an activation code. Steffen Giehring replied that they would not supply me with a "free" Fritz and suggested I go on line and buy an updated version. I pointed out to him that it's not "free" because I paid for the program. I also advised him that I have Aquarium on my laptop and it works fine, so I don't really need to use Fritz.  This attitude makes me doubly appreciative of the people that make SCID, Arena and engines like Stockfish freely available.

Short version...I've spent so much time over the weekend and today monkeying around with the laptop and re-installing stuff that I'm pretty sick of computers right now.  Have a great holiday and I'll see you after Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving from us