I am now having that well earned cuppa as I have had a month enforced break from Folksy. My computer crashed and died. (When you judge this in disaster stakes please bear in mind i design and print all my personalised cards from it!) When I got it back from my computer fixer I couldn’t load my printer and all my fonts were gone. Its taken several evenings of scratching my head and patience on google to get everything sorted.
Well fingers crossed its sorted!
Always worth having a back- up computer even if it’s an older model. Sooner or later most people have an equivalent computer glitch, whether it’s a virus that by-passes even the best antivirus software, or a failed hard drive, or all the settings change without warning, etc.
Also, when changing to a brand new computer , you have to be careful with the latest operating system. Printers, scanners, and similar can need updated drivers before working again. Yes, if you rely on the computer for your business, as many do, it can be so stressful !
Glad you’ve got it sorted Emma, I’ve had a similar problem (but not quite on as grand a scale) my printer wasn’t ‘talking’ to the laptop, the laptop could find the printer but when I clicked ‘print’ all I got was ‘printer not responding’ this meant I couldn’t print out any toppers/sentiments so I’ve had to use up what I already had.Yesterday I was getting very frustrated as I wanted to personalise a card for my nephew’s birthday and try out some of the designs on a new Christmas DVD-Rom so I sat and looked through the online help files for our printer (most of which might as well be written in Latin!) it turns out that out printer had ‘unsynced’ itself from the broadband router so all I had to do was re-enter the security code and bingo it worked (wish I’d thought of that last week instead of mentioning it to my hubby and being told he’d ‘look at it later’)
Welcome back! I think I would go insane without my computer for a month.
I haven’t had any disasters on that score … but I did manage to snap the metal presser foot on my 20 year old overlocker yesterday. I have no idea how it happened. Now I’m trying to find a replacement … aaaargh.
I know I can use another laptop in the house as DH decided I should have a back up so I can use any of the other pc’s and laptops in the house but, I have to go in under my own password set up.
But it’s made me also think what if I was taken ill or an accident that meant I was in hospital. I wouldn’t have access to my shop even if I was well enough to.
Should I give my DH my password as an emergency with written instructions so he could at least put up an message and pop my shop into Holiday Mode’
Also if I had orders to send out would he know what to do etc etc.
We have our home computers networked and I do save things off my laptop onto the main computer, I also share my passwords for things like folksy, etsy etc with my daughter who can fulfil orders if I am lucky enough to get any and am away doing other things.
We also use dropbox to share items but also as a method of backing up. I think computer savvy people would say that wasnt the safest way but it does work for me.
Ohhh You POOR thing Emma!!! …I too had a crash at the beginning of the year and, also like you, all my work (Kits) are stored on my PC - so that is hours upon hours - years in fact - of work!
I recently upgraded, which was a trial in itself as PC/laptops for business use are totally different in terms of what PC World et al churn out (and having to run from Windows 7 and just Office and Business programmes loaded…)…Top tip…I went to a private business who refurbished Business/Corporate PC’s from Banks etc which are often upgraded every 6 months and I now have a Dell Latitude (rrp.over £1,000+) for £245. It is pristine and the back up service is brilliant from a local business (just check any reviews).
Let’s hope it is all sorted now and you can start selling again! Mx
Ditto our house. My husband is an accredited Microsoft all sort of techno including networking so everything runs amazingly smoothly… in the computer stakes. Same can’t be said of health though. My four stays in hospital this year have resulted in dire turnover on Folksy and I’m just hoping my mojo will be back online soon!
We bought a shiny new lexmark printer years ago, and had terrible trouble with it. It kept yelling at us in an American accent…
“Problem communicating with the printer”
“printer not communicating”
“Printer not attached to computer”
(wish I’d thought of that last week instead of mentioning it to my hubby and being told he’d ‘look at it later’)