My primary computer is a Linux machine running Ubuntu 13.10 (Saucy Salamander). If that doesn’t make sense to you, don’t worry. I only mention it for context. The only important take-away is that the operating system gets updates twice a year.
About a year ago, I started having issues with my web camera (which is built into the laptop). This was a real problem because my niecelettes were still to young to have actual phone conversations. The only way to really talk with them was by using (what was then called ) Google Chat.
I quickly determined that the problem was software, not hardware. I then spent a bunch of time trying to resolve the camera issue on my own and ultimately cried uncle and called tech support. That turned out to be a mistake. One the one hand, the advice I got from tech support did get my camera working again. On the other hand, whatever we did resulted in regular system errors that would, more often than not, crash my machine.
I was hoping that the operating system update released in March 2013 would resolve the issue. While it didn’t make the problem worse, it didn’t resolve the issues either. I then decided I would hang tight and do a clean installation with the next update (due in October 2013).
This week the update was released. I set about backing up my machine on an external hard drive. It was really quick because almost everything, from my passwords to almost all of my music and files already live on the cloud. Since I already had the hard drive hooked up to my machine, I did go ahead and make a local copy of all of my cloud data. As much as I love Dropbox, I always recommend keeping a local copy of your files. Normally this lives on my laptop, but since I was going to wipe it all, I wanted my data somewhere other than just Dropbox and LastPass’s servers.
Once I wiped my internal hard drive and installed the updated operating system, it took me less than 20 minutes to get my machine reconfigured and all of my files restored. That includes getting my browser reset with all of my add ons and bookmarks. All in all, I spent less than an hour from start to finish.
My computer now acts like it is brand new. It is super fast and, at least thus far, error free. The only issue is that I (and everyone else who installed the update) can’t run Chrome right now. That’s not a new problem for me because I have had issues running Chrome since my troubles began. I am quite happy with Firefox and don’t feel a need for change. The only reason I keep Chrome installed is to test the sites I am working on. So, I will keep working on installing it, but it won’t hamper my work in the short term.