07 December 2013

restore factory settings

when i originally set it up, my excitement over the netbook experience overwhelmed my good sense, and i began using the admin account right off the bat. i know it's best to create a clearcut setup -- an admin account and a standard one, using the standard to do daily work and the admin to do updates.

i simply neglected that, and by the time i realized what i was doing, i felt too far in to abandon the account, so i created another admin account and used that one to mark the first as standard. in one fell swoop, i had successfully confused the admin functionality across two accounts.

over the years, the crossed up authority led to misaligned updates, with one account inching ahead, then the other inching ahead, and for poor little toshibook, keeping track of what was where and which was when eventually got to be too much. the processor just churned and churned.

every transaction felt like wading through thick mud. folders, files, browser windows - all of it was sluggish at best, frequently non-responsive. i craved a clean slate, so i decided to create a new user account. several error messages later, the new user account seemed out of reach, and the state of toshibook, more dire.

beginning to feel a bit urgent about a fresh start, i considered a system restore. the first step (recommended by system software) was to create a restore disk. (there's no CD drive in toshibook, so it'd have been a restore "thumb drive".) again, i was assaulted with errors messages and had to abandon the effort.

this is when i began considering a complete restore to factory settings. a "pro": there wasn't any complicated software installed, no itunes or anything like that. documents, pictures, all normal stuff -- windows puts that stuff in the user file, which was easily copied to the aforementioned thumb drive.

my main concern about factory reset was that i'd misstep and end up with a useless hunk of metal and plastic -- that i'd somehow delete the OS and be forced into the netherland of ubuntu or somesuch. or, worsewise, that "factory reset" literally meant no OS. i wanted a clean start, not a science project.

my concerns were somewhat assuaged when i learned (in an online PDF of the machine's user manual) that factory reset was designed to give me an out-of-the-box machine, just like having a brand new netbook from the store. (as opposed to "before the box", which would mean no OS.)

the more i thought about it, the more i liked the idea of starting over, the chance to do it right this time. i was stoked. of course... i had my security blanket of the misc detritus, the flotsam and jetsam, everything from the user folder now sitting on the thumb drive. what could go wrong?

answer: lots of things. but, more important than what could go wrong, i wondered what would go wrong. answer: nothing. the entire process was amazingly easy. taking the leap to restore factory settings was delightfully simple, decidedly liberating, deliciously thrilling. yeah, i went there. THRILLING.

bottom line: achieving this clean slate state was precisely as energizing and refreshing as psychology promises us resetting to a clean slate state can be. the machine's functionality is terrific - speedy, accurate, not slogs and bogs. plus, little toshibook-ii just seems so happy to have had a bath.


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