Quote:

---

Originally posted by Brenda:
I screwed up my USB stick. My computer won't read it now. I did something real stupid last time I tried to use it. I pulled it out without ejecting it. I mean just pulled. So I am going to see if I can do anything with it or if I have to start from scratch.

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

Quote:

---

Originally posted by Brenda:
I screwed up my USB stick. My computer won't read it now. I did something real stupid last time I tried to use it. I pulled it out without ejecting it. I mean just pulled. So I am going to see if I can do anything with it or if I have to start from scratch.

---

Calm down, Brenda. Tell me exactly what is happening when you plug it in.

I know I probably put the fear of god in you about ejecting the drive first, but doing any actual damage to the drive happens so very rarely that I have a hard time believing this is what's just happened to you, even if you did unplug it without ejecting it.

When it did happen to me, it was catastrophic what I lost. A bad lesson I didn't have to learn twice. Up until that point, I sometimes would get a message saying "Windows found a problem with this drive", with an option to allow Windows to attempt to fix it. In every instance up until that catastrophic loss, Windows never had a problem with fixing the drives and the data was still intact. I did have one drive that continued to work fine, but every time I plugged it in after removing it without ejecting first it would give me that error and I had to have Windows fix it before I could open it.


So I need to know exactly what happens when you plug it in. Does Windows make the chime sound that it does when you put a drive in? Does your drive have an LED indicator light (and is it lighting up or flashing)? Do you get any sort of pop-ups at all when plugging in the drive, or does nothing happen at all?


I still want you to try to open the drive in Explorer and see if it shows up there even if nothing happens when you plug the drive in. It's possible that the directions Windows remembers for what to do with that drive were somehow changed, and maybe it's actually being recognized by Windows, but it's not popping up an Explorer window inside of it automatically for you anymore.

That explanation is not the most plausible, but I think it's much more plausable than your drive went bad after only pulling it out without ejecting it first only one time. Especially if your book or any photos you were looking at from the drive were all closed first before you pulled the stick out.

Sometimes windows gets all confused and won't let you eject drives because it erroneously says that there are still files that are in use. Depending on what I'm doing and which drive I'm using, a lot of times I'll just chance it and pull it out anyway (never on anything important like your book though... In that case you should just power the PC down and take it out after it turns off completely).

But make sure you never pull that thing out while you've got your book or any photos or whatever opened on it. Having any of that open AND not ejecting the drive is probably the easiest way to corrupt the data. But even in the case of corrupted data which we could make sure you just back up again, I would still think the drive itself should be fine and at worst would just need a quick format operation. Unless this was just a really unlucky happening, there's just about 0% chance that the drive itself is broken from pulling it early.



--------------------------------------------------

Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

The lights in the vanity are not designed for dimmer switches anyhow.

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by second:

Quote:

---

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

The lights in the vanity are not designed for dimmer switches anyhow.

---

Are the lights compact fluorescent bulbs? Those can't be dimmed, along with some really, really cheap LED bulbs, but everything else can be dimmed, even kerosene lamps.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Yanno... sometimes Windows does updates and it can change the way things operate too, even if you don't like the changes, so you might not have actually done anything.

I really think you would benefit from taking a class or two on computers. I'm sure they have to have something local to you that wouldn't cost too much, or might possibly even be free for you. At least in parts of America (and admittedly 20+ years ago), you were allowed to "audit" classes at certain colleges. What that means is that you're able to take the class for free as if you were one of the students paying, but no matter how you do in the class it does not count toward a college degree. That'd be perfect if they had something like that. And they'd very likely have a book for the course that is rather large with a lot of pictures in it describing how to do a ton of tasks.

We just need to get you familiarized with the basics of Windows. Navigating File Explorer and understanding things like hard drives and their assigned letters is really important, and it's really not that complex. Like my friend's dad always used to say about rehabbing houses, "it's not rocket science".

If we can get you to understand what you're looking at (and for) when using File Explorer, I have no doubt that you would confidently be able to find any file on your computer that you would ever need to find, and you would have zero concern with making backups and creating folders to organize your files and backups.



For instance... If you're in Explorer and you notice "C:\" on one of the lines, that's the top (aka Root) directory of your internal computer hard drive. It is where Windows is located, as well as any programs you install later such as Microsoft Word.

If you have a CD or DVD drive on there, that is most likely going to be "D:\".

If you were wondering what happened to "A:\" and "B:\", those were the designations for floppy drives. And I suppose since the original personal computers such as the Apple IIe that I grew up with in grade school didn't even have a hard drive and ran entirely off of the disks you put in the A: or B: floppy drives, that little quirk in the alphabet persists to this day and likely always will.



So if you already have a C: for your internal computer hard drive, and a D: for your CD or DVD drive, the next letter would be E:.

If you plug in your thumb drive, Windows should automatically assign the letter E: to your thumb drive after you insert it, and you should see it show up on the left side as E:\.

If you don't have a CD or DVD drive and all you've got is the internal hard drive, when you plug your stick in, it should show up as D:\ in File Explorer.



So this is what I mean by seeing if you can see the drive in Explorer even if the computer is not behaving the way that it did last week when you plugged the thumb drive in. I'm assuming that it used to open up a File Explorer window that was already inside the drive for you? If that's the case, you don't need that to happen to get to the drive. All you need to do is open up explorer and look on the left hand side for your drive letter.

--------------------------------------------------

Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.

---

Quote:

---

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Yeah. I think it would be a great idea for you. I'm sure they have online things where you can teach yourself, but you might be like me and not give it the attention it deserves if you're teaching yourself on your own time frame without the rigid structure of a class setting. I'm really good at teaching myself things I'm interested in learning, but if I don't have any real interest in it, it's probably not going to be something I learn on my own.


In the meantime, you should plug your drive into your computer. Open up File Explorer. Look on the left "pane" (It's why they call it Windows, afterall...).

You should see something that says "This PC" in that left pane.

Underneath this, it would list out all of your currently attached drives.

You will definately have (C:). If you have a CD/DVD player attached, that would be (D:).

I'd like you to do this and tell me that you see these and you know what I'm talking about.


Do you have a CD/DVD drive?

I'd also like to know that because then we'll know if the thumbstick would be (D:) or (E:). It's almost certainly one of the two.



(Sometimes I've gone up to the letters I, J, K, and even L before. But I've got a LOT of drives and network storage that uses up a lot more letters than you're ever likely to use).


--------------------------------------------------

Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.

---