So my main computer went on the fritz last Wednesday – I got the blue screen of death. No of my trick worked after spending 5-6 hours trying to get everything back up and running. This put me in a spot with a few deadlines and such – so I had to figure out what to do.

One quick note…I do not buy brand name desktop computers – period. I hate them. The guys at Ovation Systems her in Nashville have been building my desktops for about 5 years now and they are fantastic. You don’t get all of that preloaded junk and you can get exactly what you want and usually save some cash.

So, I called them on Thursday to drop the computer off. They called me back and told me the damage – bad hard drive and power supply. They changed them out for me and told me there was a small chance that I’d have to reformat the drive and reinstall Windows. But, I was back up on Friday and could get in and backup everything without any problems.

A few months ago I took one of my desktops in to one of the big box stores and had them figure out what was wrong. It took a few days before they could look at it and the usual rigmarole. I kept waiting for the upsell on upgrades enhancements, etc. It was very much like taking my car into the dealer. They can amazingly find all kinds of things wrong and then tell you your fetzer valve needs replacing and you’ll reluctantly go that route.

The moral of the story is you must have two “guys” now – a computer “guy” and a car “guy”. Both have to be reputable and out of the way just a little bit. And, here’s a dead giveaway when working with either – they’ll give you your bad parts back when you’re done. It’s that little extra thing that keeps you trusting them for the long haul.

Well, back to loading the mounds of software to get my desktop back in working order. Good thing is how fast your system is on a fresh load of Windows whatever you’re running.