My Friend Mike…

I have a new friend. His name is Mike. I have only known him since about ten o’clock this morning, and I will probably never hear from him again. But that’s okay. Thanks to Mike, my laptop works again.

One of the problems that I have with my laptop is I never seem to know what I did. Or when. Or how. My philosophy is: just keep pushing buttons until something happens. And hope it is something good.

If not, oh well.

And, believe it or not, when I turned on my laptop this morning, and the print and icons were HUGE, I actually went right to the right place to fix it. In the Control Panel, in Appearance, and in Display Settings.

And I want you to know that I found it all by myself. That’s the incredible part.

Of course, it didn’t work. And I was getting quite frustrated. So, I did the only thing I could think of: I called my laptop’s tech support. I even went to the System Information screen, so I knew my laptop’s serial number, model number and one other important piece of information:

For unknown reasons, I decided to extend the warranty. So, today’s little chat was covered under warranty. How cool is that?

After pushing 1 and then 2 and I don’t remember how many more numbers, I got to talk to a real live human being. Mike. He asked me all those questions that techs like to ask, like: “what were you doing when this happened?” Well, duh! I was sleeping, Mike! It was fine last night and messed up this morning!

Did I mention that Mike has the patience of Job? He must. We talked for an hour.

He sent me to a website where he could link to my machine and take over control of the mouse. He had to read me a long, legaleze-filled disclaimer about letting him control my machine, then I clicked on Accept and he was in. I love sitting there not touching anything, and the mouse is flying all over the screen.

And guess what?? He went right to where I had been, trying to fix the problem. He was successful, mainly because he made the resolution Higher instead of Lower, which was the mistake that I made.

When it got better, I was all ready to say “bye, thanks!” but not Mike. He made me shut down and then restart my laptop not once, but twice. And then, just to prove him right, the mouse froze. You know how it becomes that little hand, pointing? Well, it was pointing at my email box but it wouldn’t click and it wouldn’t move.

So, Mike had me take the battery completely out of the laptop, and unplug the laptop from the power cord. Then, while he timed it, I held the power button down for thirty seconds. I think I could have done both but, hey! Mike was getting paid to help me.

Then, I reattached the power cord, left the battery out, and restarted the laptop. Voila! Still the right resolution but now the little arrow/hand thingy was working again!! And then, I put the battery back in and Mike asked me if I had any more questions. I didn’t.

Somewhere in our hour’s worth of conversation, I gave him my website for my blog and asked him to read it. He said he would and I hope he does, so he will see this:

Thanks, Mike!!! I really appreciate all your help!