In 1997 January, we were so happy when we got our first computer. My Papa bought it for us, me and my brother. We were so proud that we stopped going out, for us playing video games became a childish thing. I and my brother used to fight for playing games on it. We had to take permission from Mom every time we wanted to play games on computer although there was no one except us who would even start the computer. Papa used to bring VCDs to watch movies on computer, I still remember, I watched Movies like Star Wars, Lost World, MIB so many times before returning them to the library. At that time I was completely unaware that CDs can be copied on to the hard drive. We used to run every EXE file which we found on computer, just to see what it does. We were free to do anything with it. No parent gives this much freedom to children of age 12-14 years. Yes I was 14 years old and my brother was just 12. And we were like owners of our own computer. Papa used to boast to his friends about what we were able to do on computers. At that time for us Operating System meant nothing. We took Windows 95 for granted. On one of my friends' Computer I saw Windows 3.1 and felt jealous just because it was different, we thought Windows 95 is back dated since we were in 1997. We tried to make windows 95 like windows 3.1 in various attempts and couldn't succeed.
At that time Floppies were so big thing for us, bigger than CDs, because we didn't know CDs can be written, we thought floppies are the only way to transfer data from one computer to another. At that time having internet connection meant just mail checking. There were two types of modems, External and Internal. External was a luxury and Internal was cheap. But for having internet connection we waited for 7-8 years. And rightfully so, because we didn't had any work with it. Everything was going on smooth till 1998 when first major crash happened in the computer. The Windows 95 was not able to start, we got the message "Verifying DMI Pool Data", and after that nothing, it used to get stuck there. We asked so many people, what happened, what is the cause, what is the cure, no answer. One of my relatives told you have to give computer to your vendor, everything needs to be re-installed. Re-installation is OK but Data Loss? So many games we had. So many word files we created, PowerPoint Slides we created during fun time, and those cool themes? Ok, we thought let's give the vendor a chance; he will install everything for us. So our computer went to the vendor for the first time. But came back without any programs, no data, just Windows 95 Plus. And it got one disability too. No sound. We were sad.
To Be Continued…
