Technology and the lack thereof

I have a love/hate relationship with computers.

I love that they are my window to the world... to people I'd otherwise have never had the opportunity to meet. To all each of you.

But I hate that they are like babies. They seem to require constant attention with some issue.

I want to be able to just turn my computer on and have it work. Every day. Consistently. I don't want to have to install new hardware, to reinstall operating systems, and to go back to a restore point because one of the kids found a virus on Facebook.

Yes, I am whining. I realize none of this is realistic. With the rapid pace of technology changes, I wouldn't be able to sit back and do nothing even if I had a new system. But I'm especially irritated that the two computers I have are both seriously outdated.

When I separated from my husband, he wanted the newer computer. Since I wanted my laptop, even though it was seriously old, and since the newer computer had some issues I was tired of dealing with, I didn't argue. But this stuck me with the seriously old laptop (whose system has never been reloaded and I don't know where the disks are), and the one-year-older desktop (with the failing video card and who knows what else) as my two computer options.

Slow, clunky, and problematic. And questionable as to whether they are worth the time or cost to keep them running.

But the alternative option is to buy new, and right now I'm not willing to spend a lot of money on multiple computers if I don't have to. I do plan to buy something new... hopefully a good but relatively basic system that doesn't cost me much over $500.

But I need to have a computer that my daughter can use for her schoolwork too, which means keeping one of my existing two systems going. So last night I installed the new video card I bought for my desktop.

And it went in great and booted without errors and didn't crash, even when I let it running instead of putting it into sleep mode.

But it also made the wireless card not work. The card still connects to my router, but doesn't reach the internet. My laptop and my wireless printer work fine, so I know it's a problem with the computer, not the router. So I rebooted. I pulled the wireless card and reseated it. I rebooted a few more times. Nothing.

And I don't know where to go from here. I can't find the wireless card in the device manager, so I don't know how to uninstall & reinstall it. I'm not sure how to go about uninstalling and reinstalling the video card either. And I'm not sure which of the above two... or neither... I should be doing.

Where's my personal tech support person when I need one?