Phew!
I’ll be honest, I think I’ve just managed a bit of a big job …
Did I mention Allison had moved out of her old flat?
Wasn’t getting on with her landlady.
She’s managed to find alternative accommodation, though, so that’s all to the good.
But, as part of the big move, yesterday, her sister, Jan, happened to mention that her (Jan’s) youngest daughter had managed to make something of a pigs ear of the family computer …
Which — as you’ve probably guessed by now — is my cue to do a couple of things.
For one thing, I told her my usual line, in these circumstances.
“Get” …
“A” …
“Mac” … !
Which Jan didn’t actually need me to do, as her and Allison’s youngest brother, Richard, has an 2007 era iMac, that he’s just spent the weekend upgrading.
Wouldn’t mind a look at that, if you reading this, Rich: wouldn’t mind knowing what you’re thinking, about Snow Leopard, me ol’ son!
At any rate, my other suggestion was equally as simple.
“Jan, why don’t we just replace Windoze, with something else … ?”
Which she was happy to go along with …
The bulk of the problem, though, was simply that her daughter, Sophie, had managed to change her password on her account, with the net result that Sophie couldn’t actually get to any of her data.
Which is a shame, but shows that — just every so often — backing things up does help. Something I intend to stress to Jan and Sophie, when I see them next …
Because, while I know the few bis I managed to recover for them will probably be useful them, it doesn’t help that I couldn’t get everything … !
But, at any rate, I know that the actual installation went as smoothly as I’ve come to expect from Ubuntu. Although it did go with a … twist … or two …
Usually, I’m told that the Wubi installer application is supposed to make the actual installation of Ubuntu — directly from the Windoze environment — relatively painless.
Which it probably would’ve done, had Jan’s Asus desktop recognised that 1) it had an Ubuntu live disc in the CD tray and 2) actually had an interior CD burner.
It wasn’t that much of a big deal, in the end.
Well …
Given that Movie Night Adrian’s usually at the other end of a text message, in these situations: his advice was to jiggle around with the BIOS settings.
Now, I don’t know what the specific group of settings I managed to adjust, today, on Jan’s desktop are actually called — I’m hoping Adrian, Trevor, Dan or Tony will be able to leave a comment, here, to let me know — but I know that Tim and I have altered the relevant ones, on his laptop.
It’s the section of the BIOS system — the Basic Input/Output System, which tells a PC where to find both the operating system, hard-drive, RAM, and other things it’ll need to get going — that tells a PC on which device to look for the operating system, and in which order.
What I’ve done, effectively, is to tell the PC to look for an OS in the CD tray first, then look for the hard drive.
That probably means I’ll have to tell Jan and Sophie not to leave any CD’s in the tray, but they’ll hopefully be able to do that.
Now, I’ve also managed to set up accounts on the desktop for both Jan and Sophie, with Jan having an administrator’sd account, and Sophie what Ubuntu OS calls a desktop account; something akin to Mac OS X’s Standard account. An account — in other words — that has limited privileges to make any serious changes to either itself, or system wide.
Did that make sense?
Tim?
Tim?
Actually, that’s another thought.
I’ll probably try and talk Jan — at least — into joining Facebook, at some stage.
Purely to put her in touch with Tim and Adele: if nothing else, they’ll probably have some handy hints and tips on how to keep an eye on what the kids are up to, online.
Which, if they’re anything like me, mean’s they’re easily distracted by things like Café World.
Now, that’s me Tim and Adele, isn’t it …
Ok, or by thing’s like Pac The Ma … no, that’s me, again, isn’t it?
You know, I really ought to have some therapy for that, shouldn’t I … ?
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