Sometimes it’s easy to forget that Grand Junction isn’t exactly a bustling metropolis, and that the surrounding area is still home to many small farms and ranches.
Will, the owner of one of these small farms in rural Mesa County uses his computer to run his farm. He uses spreadsheets to keep track of his fields – how much of each nutrient and fertilizer that he puts in each plot. He also uses a digital almanac and weather apps to preconfigure his numerous sprinklers and automatic watering systems.
So when Will’s computer froze up after a Windows update a couple months ago, he was in a bit of a panic. Whenever he would turn the computer on, he was met with a black screen and nothing more. It was the middle of planting season, and the worst possible time for Will’s computer to go on the fritz.
Every now and again one of Microsoft’s updates to Windows can occasionally cause a computer to become unbootable. It doesn’t happen very often, but it does happen.
We were originally hoping that it would be a simple matter of just resetting the computer to a previous restore point, getting Will and his farm back up and running nice and quickly. Unfortunately, System Restore was turned off – as it is by default in Windows 10 – leaving us up the proverbial creek.
We would have to take a different approach.
We booted the computer up using a USB drive with Linux installed on it. From there we were able to transfer all of Will’s data – tons of spreadsheets and other documents – to an external Hard Drive.
Once we were sure that we got all of the data copied, we then reinstalled Windows 10 onto the computer. We made sure that all the drivers were installed, and the system was up-to-date. We then installed Microsoft Office, and Will’s almanac and weather apps.
Next we transferred all the data back onto Will’s computer, putting it in all the appropriate folders. We even changed the default wallpaper to the picture of Wills dog that he previously had as his background.
Finally, we ensured that System Restore was active, so that if something like this were to happen again, the downtime would be minimal.
With that all done, Will, and his farm, was back up and running. Just in time to finish planting.
Will was so happy that he promised to bring us a couple boxes of vegetables when it comes time to harvest.
We’re really looking forward to those veggies.