Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Back in a Flash

I keep asking myself ... why do I like computers? I expect this entry to be of no interest to anybody but me and hard core geeks who like to laugh at dumb people like me.

It was the same problem I'd had for months now. Flash player wouldn't work. I tried to fix it off and on for months, sitting here with Google trying to follow what they tell me to do. Always unsuccessful. In truth, it rarely was a problem. There are two games that I could no longer play, but I didn't need to embarrass myself by letting Peggy lord her miniature golf score over my pathetic attempts to play the game. And, really, how many times can you shoot sheep with arrows?

So until yesterday, it was only a raspberry seed in my wisdom tooth as far as irritation levels were concerned.

But yesterday I decided I would finally sit down and do my "Dogs of 2008" book. Each year, I put together a bunch of pictures of dogs we have fostered over the year. There are several ways to create books on line, but my favorite book was one I did on Lulu.com, so I decided I would finally get around to Creating My Book.

That's when I discovered that Lulu uses flash technology and when I went to the web site and tried to get to the book creation page, it told me that I needed to download the latest version of the Flash Player, which I have done countless times before.

That's when Purgatory started.

I was GOING to figure it out, one way or another.

I uninstalled the old Flash
I downloaded the new Flash
I installed the new Flash

It still wouldn't work.

So I did Google search and ran a scan on the computer. Most of the web sites recommended running a program called RegCure, which I did. It found many errors which, of course, it would only fix if you pay the reg fee. I did. $40 worth. It supposedly fixed all the errors.

I uninstalled and reinstalled Flash again and there was no change.

I did a cold boot. NOW when it booted up, it tried to install some viewer that I didn't recognize at all and said it can't install without an install disk. I would have just ignored this, but the error message couldn't be removed from my screen. It said "An unhandled exception has occurred in a component in your application. Click continue and application will ignore the error and attempt to continue. Object reference not set to an instance of an object."

When I clicked "continue," nothing happened. And the message stayed on top of every other document I tried to load.

I ran another RegCure scan which picked up another 135 errors which it supposedly fixed but I was still stuck with this error message in the center of my screen which I couldn't clear.

I tried turning off the computer and discovered that I couldn't even shut the thing down.

I finally did a system restore, which got rid of the error message. But it also deleted the $40 program I installed (which I don't understand at all...but at least I could reinstall it and now I had the registration code for it).

Of course I still didn't have a flash player, but at least I no longer had the error message on my screen that I can't remove.

I sent all this information to my guru, who, I know, is sick and tired of hearing from me.

I figured he was so sick of hearing from me he was just not going to call, but he finally did call in the afternoon. He talked me through installing Flash on Internet Explorer (he told me it was different for IE than it was for Firefox) and gave me instructions for how to install it for Firefox.

I dutifully typed out all of his instructions and then followed them down to the last step, which I couldn't figure out and of course it didn't work, but I figured that was OK--at least I could use it in IE. But then I re-read the instructions and a light began to glimer, ever so softly. Maybe if I tried this.....

Believe it or not, it worked. After so many months, I finally had flash back and Peggy could once again humiliate me. And I could load the software for Lulu and can finally get started on laying out my Dogs of 2008 book.

Best of all, I kinda sorta know what I did.

But then I went to load Front Page so I could write this entry and it wouldn't recognize my "personal web" as valid. That meant doing another system restore, which I did, hoping it wouldn't wipe out everything I had just done. And, thank goodness, it did not.

In the end, I had Front Page, I had Flash, and I had a splitting headache. Also, William the puppy wanted only to sink his teeth into my feet or hang onto the leg of my pants as I walked around the house.

Some days it just doesn't pay to get up in the morning.


Today is my friend Char's birthday. Everybody turn and face the direction of U.C. Berkeley and shout "Go Bears!" She will be every so appreciative.

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