Computer worries.

My Toshiba laptop has been acting wonky for a couple of months. It refuses to go to sleep. (The screen will go dark if I walk away from the computer for more than 10 minutes--sometimes--but usually not.) It refuses to shut off. (It freezes after going through 99% of the process.) And, today upon arrival at the Bolt Hole, when I started it up after shutting it off at the Aerie, it did not show anything on the screen when I started it up. Not seeing a log in screen, I shut it off and then turned it on again...three times. Nothing but I could hear the usual sounds in the background so I typed in my password and hit "Enter" and heard the usual sounds from my normal sign in routine. WTF?

I started looking around to see if there was a button I might have accidentally pushed that caused the screen to go dark. AHA! Function-F5 seemed the likely culprit. It switches to a monitor as the output device--and back. Perhaps if I pushed Function-F5....

BINGO! The screen came alive again.

This is the first time this has happened and I've no idea how or why it occurred. It's virtually impossible to accidentally hit Function-F5 so it must have something to do with the poor behavior at Shutdown.

This little Toshiba Satellite has served me well for at least five years with nary a hitch until the last 6 months. (One exception: Windows Defender fails to load "The handle is invalid," it says. Of course, no Windows Defender means I can't control the start-up programs.) I did upgrade its memory at one point when it was having some issues running PhotoShop Elements. (Issues that are still occurring, BTW.) It's running Windows Vista (Home Premium) which is not the most stable of systems. Perhaps it's time to start looking for a new machine.

(There! Let's see if the little bugger gets the hint!)