Stupidity Rant Take One

My buddy Bloomin' Onionhead told me that I may not be seeing him online much for a while. He said he is having troubles with his computer. He thinks it might have a virus. Being one of my favorite online people, I didn't want to lose him to the death of a computer virus. Thankfully, he and I have never had unprotected text. Hearing about his potential virus, I breathed a sign of relief that I never downloaded with this man.

I suggested that he visit Trend Micro, where they have a house call option that will check for viruses. It took a while for the program to surf through all of his porn important files. When it was finished checking, Bloomin' Onionhead discovered he had 41 viruses. That man really ought to compute with surgical gloves, if you know what I mean.

He used the clean virus feature from the house call, which removed all 41. He said his mouse and keyboard seemed to be working better right away but was still having trouble with his sound. He checked all of the obvious settings on his Sounds and Devices feature in the control panel to no avail.

I apologized for not being able to help and said a sad goodbye, for I knew he was shipping his computer off to the shop for a sound check and it would be a long time before the two of us would type to each other again.

I know you are thinking, "Lois, where is the stupidity as mentioned in your title." Well, folks I am getting there. I had to first set the stage.

When I started my computer up today, I had no sound. I panicked. I thought of my friend right away. I tried to think back to all of the files that Bloomin' Onionhead tried to slip my way. I wondered if he caught me in a moment of weakness that I'd forgotten about. Maybe I was drunk one night and happily accepted something tainted from his hard drive.

"Not my precious laptop! Please, not that!" I cried.

I went to Sounds and Devices, "All drivers are working properly."
"Bullshit! If they were working properly then I would have sound!"

I wanted to crawl into a denial hole but instead opted for a virus check through McAffe. It found no bad files and no viruses. I went to Trend Micro to try a PC House Call. It also found nothing. Although this news made me happy, it still did not provide me with a reason why my sound suddenly didn't work anymore.

I right clicked on the volume controls in my taskbar, nothing was muted, everything was set at loud. I hobbled my way through the troubleshooter in my help options but none of those suggestions restored my sound.

I was devastated. I love to listen to music while I use my computer. I can't go without sound.

I went to various sites that Google helped me find. None of them helped. I spent hours trying to fix my sound and then decided to try Toshiba technical help. First I checked their website. It blows. So I tried calling the 800 number.

I went through a long series of recorded messages and finally got a real live person who amazingly was easy to understand, unlike the last guy. (See "I'll Tell You Where I've Been" in the December archives)

"Go to start, then run, now type in winver and hit okay."
"I'm running service pack 1, I heard 2 had problems."
"Yes, it does. Good. Okay. Now, I want you to lift the front of the laptop up and look at all of the buttons and lights."
"Okay. But I have gone through all of the troubleshooting options and checked that it wasn't muted as well as checked all of my drivers."
"Very good. Now did you lift the front of the laptop?"
"Yes."
"Do you see the indicator lights?"
"Yes."
"Do you see a wheel down there to the right of your wireless switch?"
"Yes."
"Turn the control to your right."
"Okay."
"Try the sound."
"Holy crap! It works! I thought that was to dim the screen!"
"You aren't the first person to think so. Our older models had the dimmer there and no volume control."
"Well, I feel absolutely stupid. Sorry for wasting your time. And thank you for your help!"
"It's no problem. Thank you for choosing Toshiba."

Short bus here I come! So now I wonder about my friend Bloomin' Onionhead. Maybe he doesn't have anything wrong after all. Maybe he just needs to turn his god dang volume switch into the right position.

(Hangs head in shame) I still feel like a complete moron!