Cartoon lady angry at computer

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Tell me you never wanted to throw a technology device out the window. Or take a hammer to it. Of course you have. It’s inevitable.

But, what happens when failed technology affects your marketing tactics? Now, that’s serious!

Yes, it happened to me recently, hence this cathartic post. When the Windows 10 anniversary update came out, my computer spit it out. My Dell XPS 8700 (with 24 GB of RAM and a 228 GB solid state drive) decided it wasn’t going to cooperate. This computer is a workhorse and it acted like a big baby.

This wasn’t just happening to me. I did the research. The update affected millions of computers!

For days after the update, software froze, the computer crashed incessantly, and I simply couldn’t work without shutting it down manually every 10 minutes or so. I tried hundreds of solutions including a complete re-install of Windows, but nothing worked.

And, what do most of us do when this happens?

SCREAM!!!!

Some of you may have an IT specialist you use periodically or keep on retainer. Lucky you. All I have is little old me. So, I sacrificed days of productivity plus an entire weekend to troubleshoot and resolve the problem.

And, what happened to my usual marketing tactics?

Absolutely nothing. Nada. I couldn’t do anything. No social media marketing. No reading or sharing valuable marketing content. No writing. No lead generation. I was 100% engrossed in fixing the computer.

Thank goodness I have a laptop I used for the most important tasks… like checking and responding to emails and re-scheduling appointments. It also came in handy for researching Windows and technology forums to see what others were doing. Without it, I don’t know what I’d have done.

After consulting two Microsoft tech experts with no resolution, I finally contacted a Dell tech specialist who was very helpful. He took me as far as I could go before the next step would be opening the CPU. At that point, he told me that I’d have to pay a $120 fee to move on as the computer was off warranty.

What could I do? I agreed and rebooted, ready for his next instructions. happy cartoon lady

But, then a very strange thing happened. After rebooting, lo and behold, the Windows 10 re-installation worked, taking me back to the first prompt screen.

Was it karma? Was it luck? Who cares? I rejoiced!

That was last Friday. Today, I finally completed re-installing my software, recovering my data, and entering new settings.

So, when failed technology affects your marketing tactics, you have a few choices:

Get someone else to take over your tactics while you work on a resolution (if there are other people in your organization).
Get someone else to fix your technology device while you use another one to do your work.
However, if you work alone, you’re s–t out of luck. Take care of fixing the technology first – as quickly as you can – so you can get back to marketing. Then, have a drink (or two).