Sometimes doing nothing is the best way to fix a computer

[buster]

A day after doing an update on Marilyn's Mint computer,the best machine in the house, it booted to fine print words on the screen that mean 'I don't think so'.

It didn't take long to find a work around by poking keys, two solutions actually, and I left it at that, though it meant I had to boot the computer for Marilyn because it involved the F12 key.

We all know that it was my duty to read the pages of help that would be offered, much of it totally wrong, and embark on a quest that would be as boring as a Sunday School lesson and probably take longer.

But this was a Mint that had travelled over a long period of time, years, through at least three computers and through many upgrades. I could say I had faith in it, but mostly I am extremely lazy, or maybe just parsimonious with any expenditure of energy.

And after about ten days, a kernel upgrade appeared at the bottom of my screen, and after an install and a reboot, the computer functions as it should.

Sometimes doing nothing works well enough

[ssfc72]

Well told story, thanks Buster.

Maybe you are on a lucky streak and you should buy a ticket to this Fridays Lotto Max , which is 70 million dollars. :-)

[Jason]

The computer did all the work.

[buster]

Doing nothing wins again!

Same computer. For a few days I saw there was a point upgrade which I ignored. I did however put in a new kernel when asked.

But then I was back to booting while tapping the f12 key. I could live with that.

Not too long after I sat down and did the point upgrade, attempted the reboot, which worked, and it now boots happily.

Again lethargy wins the day. Searching for solutions is sometimes not as good as having patience while you wait for the computer, or Mint, to solve the problem for you.

[buster]

We're now into September, and the computer, with Mint, got a new kernel and wouldn't boot automatically. A few key strokes and I was in each morning. Some others must have complained as I didn't, as a few days later a change had taken place. Marilyn said the whole screen was frozen, an unusual event. I have theories, one of which includes having automatic updates turned on. Speculation is encouraged but not necessary.

So I did a physical reboot which took us back into the operating system perfectly, and it has worked since that day, booting flawlessly.

Avoiding work seems to be the way to go, a maxim I have practiced religiously all my life.

[ssfc72]

Maybe you could try putting MXLinux on that computer? :-)

Just make sure to image the Mint drive first, so that you can get back Mint, if needed.

[Jason]

So I did a physical reboot which took us back into the operating system perfectly, and it has worked since that day, booting flawlessly.

Remember IT Crowd? They had a recording for tech support to save on having to answer the phone that said, "Have you tried turning it off and on again?". That fixes 99% of the problems. You have to just teach Marilyn how to do this.

Mint is usually pretty darn stable though. I wonder if you have an intermittent hard drive issue going on. While it may have happened after a kernel update, coincidence is more common than we think. We always look for patterns; it's in our DNA. But sometimes there's no pattern, it's just randomness.

The other thing is to only get security updates for Mint instead of all of them. That will avoid updating the kernel as often, hopefully.

[buster]

"Mint is usually pretty darn stable though. I wonder if you have an intermittent hard drive issue going on. While it may have happened after a kernel update, coincidence is more common than we think."

Pretty sure it's the new kernel Jason because my method to get it booted generally is to revert to the previous kernel. Booting with the new kernel doesn't work. Booting with the previous does. Seems pretty conclusive.

It's working fine now by the way.

[Jason]

Pretty sure it's the new kernel Jason because my method to get it booted generally is to revert to the previous kernel. Booting with the new kernel doesn't work. Booting with the previous does. Seems pretty conclusive.

Good point. There must be something in your hardware that it doesn't like. Did you confirm that it's set to only do security updates, though? Perhaps the new kernel wasn't needed anyway. By default, Mint will do all updates, security, patches and new software versions. But I guess you don't want to spend that extra time.