Computer Nightmare!!
January 25, 2007

Ugh! I am now living a computer nightmare! About two weeks ago I got internet access at home. It worked beautifully for five days, and I got a lot of work done in my new home office. Then, without any reason, provocation, or change, it suddenly stopped working. I tried defragmenting my hard drive, freeing up more memory by deleting files, and reinstalling the software (15 times!) to no avail.

The next day I went back to Bashindara City (a large mall on the other side of town) to return the card. It took me an hour to get there and when I arrived it was closed (on a Wednesday!) I then went to Grameen phone, my internet provider, to see if they could help me. A nice gentleman came up to me and immediately found someone to help so that I would not have to wait in the very long line. The men who helped me where very nice, but we determined that it was not a problem with my SIM card, which meant they could not fix the problem for me. They said it was either a problem with my computer or with my Edge card.

Today I went back to Bashindara City and spoke with the guy who sold me the card. He was very nice and got me another one. Unfortunately, that one didn’t work either, so he said he would take me to the corporate office for the distributor of this brand of card to see if they could help.

We got into a rickshaw and after answering the usual questions – what country am I from, am I married, how to I like Bangladesh, etc. – he asked me something that I didn’t understand. At first I thought he was speaking Bangla, but then I realized it was English. It took me a few more minutes to realize that he was asking me if I liked ice cream. I laughed and said, “Yes!” He then got off of the rickshaw and bought me some ice cream. Where in the US can you find customer service like that?!

A few minutes later we arrived at the corporate office. A man there spent 45 minutes installing various programs and trying different devices. We finally came to the conclusion that it was a problem with my operating system. So it seems at this point I have two choices: 1) I can back-up my files, reinitialize my computer, reinstall the original Windows ME operating system, and then upgrade to Windows NT (Sony has a 250 page manual on how to do this) or I can breakdown and replace my seven year-old computer. Neither option is appealing…

For the moment I am able to check my e-mail on the ancient computer at the American Club. I will not have Skype access until I get my computer problem fixed though. Everybody send positive computer thoughts my way!!