Computing
The speed is delicious. There are probs
to be solved, but I still hope all will be well in the end. The main
difficulty yesterday was that I couldn't get the old computer to read
the external hard drive. It can “see” it, all right. It is called
G: and has several files on it, including a user manual. But I can't
get hold of any of them, or copy anything to the disk. “i/o error”,
it says. Is this a USB2/USB3 compatibility problem? They told me in the shop
that there wouldn't be one.
My next step, I discover from some
Googling, is to install a program called Windows Easy Transfer on
both computers. It's available from Microsoft, free I hope. It is
just possible that that program will solve the i/o problem. If not, I have to go on and get an Easy Transfer Cable and
hope that works.
I really, really need to move Quicken,
and I want Lotus Organizer, too, which has a lot of knitting stuff.
Advice gratefully received.
James' wife Cathy wrote this morning
advising a wireless keyboard and mouse and – ahah! – a little
side table to put the laptop computer on while I work with an
external monitor, I plugged the old monitor in yesterday and it works
fine, but the laptop was in the way.
Knitting
- It occurred to me yesterday that Herzog's CustomFit could be considered as an extension of EZ's EPS: fundamentally the same idea of freeing the knitter from the tyranny of “getting gauge” by making the pattern come to you.
- The new VK surprised me by turning up yesterday. Some nice lace shawls – but a shortage of things I want to knit in lace is not the problem around here. I like No. 22, a cardigan in Wisdom Yarns Poems Silk, a new one to me. The link is to good old Jimmy Bean.
- And the local knitting continues well. I have finished the second rank (of three) of upside-down rams, on the Rames&Yowes blankie – so the end of the whole centre panel isn't far off. It will remain to do another small filler pattern, and then the upside-down Yowes.
- I took advantage of all this delicious speed to go back to Craftsy yesterday. I re-watched Franklin's bit about mattress stitch, and then I went and did it on the little sample we are working on in class – so now I am free to go on! Herringbone stitch comes next. And then I have all my stashed Craftsy classes to look forward to – Eunny on lace, and Alasdair Post-Quinn on double knitting, and the rest of Herzog on fit, Buttonbands and Buttonholes, a free little class about wool... I wish Craftsy would sign Franklin up for his new real-life class about putting zips in.
Non-knit
I've been meaning to ask you: looms on
which one somehow weaves coloured rubber bands into bracelets for
one's friends suddenly seem to be cropping up everywhere. I must be
referring to Zite. I love things like that. But my youngest
granddaughter is now a teenager – she has just turned 13. Would
that be too infantile a Christmas present? I feel I really need an
eight-year-old.
My 12 year old has announced that the woven rubber band bracelet is a marketing fad like the silly bands of a few years ago and she will have nothing to do with them. I don't know if your 13 year old has evolved so cynically . . .
ReplyDeleteMy niece who turns 12 on Saturday has spent hours making those rubber band bracelets in the last couple of months. Apparently the wave has not really hit Toronto yet so she liked being an early adopter. Hard to know about the 13 year old - does she seem to be years older than her age or not yet?
ReplyDeleteLisaRR
p.s. Good luck with the new computer. Always an exciting time to enjoy the new features and say goodbye to the old one holding one back.
I bought a couple this summer for my nephews children, the eldest is 10. They have made enough bracelets to go around the world several times, I think. I agree on the early adopter aspect for an older child.
ReplyDeleteMy grandkids make them without the loom, just weave them with their fingers. The oldest is almost 12, and a boy, and he is as into the project as his 10 year old sister. Go figure.
ReplyDeleteHere in southern New England, the middle schoolers, grades 5,6,7, are really enjoying the rubber band bracelets.. That would be 11, 12, 13 years old. Does this help?
ReplyDeleteThe drive issue could be a formatting issue rather than a USB2/USB3 problem. I/O errors are typically indicators of faulty hardware, however. Does the drive work with the new computer and not the old one? You could use Microsoft's error-checking utility to check the health of the drive:
ReplyDeletehttp://windows.microsoft.com/en-IN/windows7/Check-a-drive-for-errors
I am guessing that the drive will be formatted as NTFS (you can verify this by right-clicking on the drive and selecting 'Properties'. On the 'General' tab the formatting is listed next to 'File System' (at least in Win7). Depending on the OS on the old computer, that could be a problem. But, if the old computer is WinXP or Win2000 at a minimum, you should be okay with that format.
Another aspect that could be a problem is partition size. One solution might by to partition the external hard drive into multiple smaller partitions. Back-up any data you want to keep from that drive first, though. More information on re-partitioning a drive:
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-vista/can-i-repartition-my-hard-disk
I would start with checking the health of the drive with Microsoft's built-in utility first. If the drive health is bad you could then return it rather than trying to fix the problem yourself. If the drive health is good, then I would next test to see if you can read and write to it from the new computer. If you can read and write from the new computer, then I would try repartitioning the hard drive. WinXP pre-SP1 could only handle partitions below 127GB, but I an guessing that if you are in WinXP you have long-since applied the service packs.
Probably way too much info here. You can email me if you want. I don't do PC stuff very often as we are mostly macs and linux at work, but I'll help if i can.
I'm interested in seeing how people get on with CustomFit. I put in my measurements and gauge swatch and was given, what I felt were slightly off measurements for the pattern. I didn't buy it... Has anyone embarked on a project yet?
ReplyDeletere partitioning drives - careful careful that is how you can erase your data... it can be tricky to start playing around with hard drives and formatting.
ReplyDeletein terms of copying programs that are installed on a different computer - you can not do that for the most part. .
you must re install the program on the new computer ... esp things like quicken and office. (this is to install the appropriate files where they belong - like in program files and other hidden places).
then you can get your data files (quicken backup files and docs, spreadsheets etc). and copy all that over.
i guess i shouldnt be amazed that a salesperson blithely said you could copy programs...
data yes, programs no.
thats the frustration - uh, i mean, FUN of getting a new computer - installing alllll those programs over again.
the only way around this is to do a complete backup on the old computer and restore it to the new computer but then you erase the new operating system and all the drivers and create another mess of a problem.
please email sogalitno at gmail.com if you need help!
one idea for transferring your data would be to copy it up to dropbox and then install dropbox on the new computer and let it sync and then you can copy the data from dropbox to the places on the new hard drive .
or just keep your data in dropbox.
is your old comptuer still working? if so you should be able to SEE it from your new computer via the NETWORK folder.
if you do see it and when clicking to open it get a prompt for a username, password box - try the windows account on that machine (ie the old computer).
if you get pass that you can then map a drive (click on COMPUTER and look at the top and see MAP A DRIVE or under one of the menus).
then as long as the old computer is powered on you will have access to all the data on it.
you can copy from there to the new computer.
good luck ... ;o