Thanks for Nothing, Microsoft

And I really mean nothing. I used to have a laptop, new one that I got for Christmas last year. It came with Vista Home Premium. It was a really good computer. That is until I downloaded the SP1 (Service Pack 1) update and installed it.

First, I had no sound. Spent a day trying to troubleshoot and get it to work to no avail. I have the Realtek High Definition Audio for those interested. Well, should say DID have. I found a lot of information that the update was causing the problem. I decided to uninstall the SP1.

It took over an hour to install and about the same amount of time to uninstall. Still no sound came from my rapidly evolving boat anchor.

Did a couple of restarts. No luck.

Everything said that Realtek was working properly, the most current drivers were installed, etc. Everything that is except no sound.

Decided the next thing to do was simply do a restore. Vista has a nifty little restore function. THAT ALSO DOESN'T WORK!

After allowing the thing to run for a couple of hours with the reassuring message on the screen that Restore was busy at work I shut it down.

So now I have a computer with Vista Home Premium on it and no sound. Oh yeah, did I mention that after doing the Restore thing I had to restart using SAFE MODE since normal boot up also seemed to no longer work.

I called the tech support for my computer, which is made by ZT, this morning. Since it is Saturday and could play with it with the tech support guy on the other end of the line.

Boy, am I a dummy. ZT tech support only works Mon - Fri 9 AM to 6 PM.

Helluva a good tech support you got there. They happen to work the same hours I work, so there will be no help coming form them.

So if anybody wants to chime in with possible solutions, and trust me, I have been trying everything I could find. I have done the uninstall the device and look for new hardware trick, tried to run every kind of diagnostic known to man all with no success.

If I could just get it back to the way it was 72 hours ago when the sound worked and I didn't have to start it in safe mode.

This is the last computer I will buy with a Windows operating system on it. Bill Gates and his band of monkey clowns can take it and shove it, which is what I may do with the laptop if I don't get it working properly.

Oh yeah Vista Home Premium came pre-installed so I don't have the disks to just start over.

Well my wife really did mean well......


UPDATE: 8:30 PM I have resolved the problem. I borrowed a copy of the Vista Home Premium software from my daughter and installed Vista from scratch. Of course this means I must now go through and recreate everything I had and yes I am using Firefox, always have, but I have to go rebuild all my bookmarks. but hey I don't have to lip read the videos anymore.