Bricked it!

More huge problems with the laptop.  Rather than boring you at the beginning of the post, for those who are interested, I'll leave it to the end.

Solar Array

The solar panels on the roof look filthy.  There are two schools of thought.  Those who state they must be regularly cleaned and those who say not to bother are they will self clean with rain.

I noticed our array is only producing 4.56kW but it has a maximum output of 5kW.  Looking at the output history I could see times when the 5kW peak was being generated.  However it was only a brief peak and as we have 6.6kW of panels I expected a constant 5kW on a sunny day.  Cleaning the panels might improve the output.

Placing the aluminium stepladder against the roof steel guttering has two disadvantages.  Metal on metal can slip and the ladder can damage the paint on the gutter.  I went to the local hardware store and looked at 'gutter guards'.  These clip over the lip of the gutter protecting it and preventing the ladder from slipping.  I'm NOT PAYING $60 for a simple plastic gutter guard.  Scrounging around the workshop I found some plywood offcuts, an old rubber floor mat from the car along with a short length of dowel.

My DIY gutter guard

 Safety is important.  I needed to secure myself against a fall.

Not like this…………

Whilst I was on the roof playing Tarzan with the hose and brush Jan was busy making Damson plum jam using the last of the plums from her tree.

The Laptop

I 'bricked' the laptop attempting an upgrade from Windows 8.1 to version 10.  All the online instructions stated it would be easy.  It wasn't!  There were a number of problems.  The first was my version of Windows had never been updated.  When I did attempt to update the system I discovered the update program wouldn't work because my laptop was "too modern" (as a result of me downgrading it to Windows 8.1 when purchased). 

I then decided to directly install Windows 10 onto the Laptop using the backup copy I had made when the laptop was purchased.  That didn't work!  Eventually I decided to reinstall the backup version I had made of my Windows 8.1 last week only to discover that didn't work either.  The laptop wouldn't boot.  I was left with a 'brick'!

This all occurred over several days.  Eventually I downloaded a copy of Windows 8.1 and installed it onto to the laptop.  This gave me a working pc with a Windows Boot Manager.  But I had lost all my programs and data.  However I then booted the laptop from a Linux thumb drive and reinstalled my backup using the Linux dd command.

All my original programs and data was restored <phew>.  However I still had a problem with the Windows update program and the laptop also required me to login with a password. 

Eventually I managed to find a solution on how to activate the Windows Update routine <here> and update the system.  I'm still working on the password issue.

Now that Windows 8.1 is fully updated I might again try upgrading to Windows 10.