Banging your head on the kitchen table elicits a response

I have been having a bad week or more. My 4D software stopped acknowledging my dongle. (the cute little red thing you have to have to make the software run) . I called Tech Support twice and my dealer three times, not in that order. I even joined the Yahoo group for 4D.

*** Have you every noticed that the Caps of 4 is $ ****

Anyway. Last week my desktop stopped but I was not in a total panic, because my laptop worked. But I called Tech Support. They only give you one free call. Because my problem was so unusual, he gave me a another free call. We ran, he held while I ran the updates, I already ran months ago. No fix. Next suggestion, to run the HASP runtime fix, the dongle is made by Aladdin called a HASP USB. Nope, didn't fix it. SO on to uninstalling the whole thing and reinstalling the software, PS don't forget to delete the folder on the c:/ called 4D, otherwise it won't install properly. Check! Nope didn't work either. On Saturday, I worked on 2 of the 4 digitizing designs for a friend, needs to be done and stitched by Thursday. Sat, I finished 2 and saved, then made dinner and got distracted by a movie with the Daughter. Sunday after church and lunch I thought I would work on the other two. NO such luck, my dongle would not work. Banging your head on the kitchen table elicits a response. In my house, my teenagers run and hide in their rooms.

First thing Monday (yesterday) call Tech Support back. She walks me through more things to try, then she suggests, that I run to my dealer and try my dongle in her computer, to see if I need a new dongle, or if it is my computers, yes plural. Okay, I ran over there and my dongle works fine in the dealers computer. I had to convince her my dongle would not kill her computer too!

Anyway I was to drive to Grand Rapids yesterday and I turned the problem over and over in my head on the 1 hour plus drive. I got home at 5 pm, fixed dinner and crashed out on the couch. Hubby is sick with the flu and I didn't get a lot of sleep. This morning after running errands, I decided to Restore my computer to before the problem happened.

Eureka. It worked. On both computers. I finished design number 3. Turns out the a Windows update caused the problem. Now I'll skip this update.

On the good news side, I picked up my Magna Hoop Patch Kit and I'm going to work on that for the rest of the afternoon, while the Motrin kicks in.