About Computer Basics

It started with a floppy disk that wouldn’t format

It was 1998, and I’d just bought my first computer—a used Pentium II with a 3.5-inch floppy drive that whirred like a dying lawnmower. I wanted to save my first story, a terrible sci-fi epic about a hacker who outsmarts a mainframe.

I inserted a blank disk, clicked *Format*, and waited. The drive light spun, the motor whined, and then: Error 170—No disk in drive. The disk was there. I’d watched it go in. But the system didn’t see it.

I tried again. Same result. Then I tried a different disk—a friend’s old backup that had a few corrupted files. That one formatted fine. The problem wasn’t the drive. It wasn’t the disks. It was the *combination*: my disk, my computer, and the way Windows 98 handled floppy controllers.

I spent two hours Googling (on dial-up, so that meant two hours of waiting for each search result), testing every disk I could find, and adjusting jumpers on the drive until the BIOS finally recognised it.

The first time it worked, I saved that story. But not before I’d ruined three disks, scratched the drive’s read head with a paperclip, and learned that ‘format’ isn’t just a command—it’s a negotiation between hardware, software, and sheer luck.

Nine tries before it worked

I reformatted that disk seven more times before I stopped. Each attempt changed one thing: the disk brand, the drive’s power cable, the BIOS setting for ‘floppy seek’. Once, I even tried a third-party formatting tool, which crashed mid-process and left the disk unreadable.

That was the worst—no errors, just silence, and the disk spinning uselessly in the drive like a car with no ignition.

The eighth try worked. The ninth was the one I documented: a step-by-step guide for anyone else stuck with a floppy that refused to cooperate. I wrote it in Notepad, printed it out, and taped it to the inside of my monitor.

By then, I’d realised the real problem wasn’t the hardware. It was the *assumptions*: that the manual was right, that the error message was accurate, that I knew what I was doing.

I published that guide online years later, long after floppy drives were obsolete. But the method stayed: every ‘how-to’ here started with something that broke, something I had to fix by trial, error, and writing it all down *while it was happening*.

The mind behind these pages

That was me—Valerie Vasquez, the person who spent Christmas Eve at 2 AM formatting disks while my dad watched *Die Hard* in the next room, wondering why I wasn’t wrapping presents.

I run Computer Basics because I still see that green-screen monitor in every ‘can’t save file’ error, every driver update that doesn’t stick. My first computer was a tool for stories, but I learned faster from its failures than its successes.

I’m the kind of person who keeps a text file called *‘Things That Broke Today’* and adds to it before coffee. My dad says I have ‘engineer’s patience’—which is just a fancy way of saying I’ll debug a printer jam for 45 minutes before asking for help.

The habit started with floppy disks and never left. Now, it’s the reason every guide here has a *‘If this doesn’t work’* section.

I also collect vintage computer parts—mostly dead keyboards and monitors I can’t resist fixing. The one that’s still working is a 2003 IBM ThinkPad keyboard, held together with duct tape and hope. It’s the ugliest thing in my office, and it’s never failed me.

This site exists because someone, somewhere, is staring at a screen that won’t load, a program that won’t install, or a command prompt that just says ‘Bad command or file name’. And they’re about to give up. I want them to find the guide I wish I’d had in 1998.

Everything here is written the way that floppy disk was

We don’t publish a guide until it’s been tested on three different machines: a budget laptop, a mid-range desktop, and whatever I’m currently using to debug something else. The floppy disk taught me that ‘works for me’ isn’t enough.

So every tutorial includes OS versions, driver notes, and a *‘What I’d Do Differently’* section—because the next time you try it, your setup will be different.

We write the rough drafts in plain text files, no formatting, no distractions. That’s how I caught the first typo in my floppy guide: a missing semicolon in a batch script that made the whole thing crash.

Now, every step is checked twice—once while doing it, once while typing it—and the ‘final’ version is always the third draft.

A year after publishing, we revisit every guide and test it again. Hardware changes. Software updates break old workarounds. The floppy disk’s lesson? Nothing stays fixed. So we don’t.

What that means for you

You’ll find no ‘click here’ advice here. Every step includes what to look for if it goes wrong, and what to do if the error message doesn’t make sense. That’s the floppy disk method: assume the system is lying, and prepare for it.

You won’t get a list of ‘top 10’ tools or ‘best’ software. You’ll get the ones that worked for us—and the ones that didn’t, and why. Because the real answer isn’t ‘use this,’ it’s ‘here’s how to tell if it’s right for you.’