Flipping Heck!

[jacey]

Sitting in the office today, halfway through answering an email when BB comes in and starts asking how to use the franking machine to send a packet, so we're chatting and I'm sitting back, hands off the keyboard when suddenly my computer (Dell Vostro 1500 laptop) screen flips upside down.

Glurk!

So I do what everyone does when they don't know what to do - I reboot.

Computer reboots with screen upside down.

BB, my computer guru, sucks air in through clenched teeth just like a garage mechanic and says: Well, I've never seen that before!

I do what any sideways thinking person would do in such circumstances, I turn the laptop upside down, balance it on a book so the wires sticking out of the rear USB ports don't catch and start mousing the Dell helpfiles figuring if I can find out how to rotate the screen I can reverse it. Nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch. At least not in any subject I can think of such as 'screen display' and 'flip screen image' etc.

I go into the bios to reboot using the 'last good version'. It reboots upside down again.

Bugger!

So I turn it upside down again and google 'flip screen image' and come up with the answer immediately - at exactly the same time as BB comes back down from his computer with the same answer. Control - alt - up/down/left/right arrow depending on whether you want it flipped 180 or 90 in either direction. Simple. So why did it flip while I wasn't touching it and why wasn't the whole flip and rotate thing in the bloody Dell manual indexed under something sensible?

Aaargh.

Comments

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

That happened to me with my last Samsung and I went into blind panic too. This Sony, on the other hand, has a habit of going into panic mode if I try to shut it down and have forgotten turn off the Microsoft Magnifer and I really must take that off the Start menu because it isn't a blind bit of use...

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

I should have taken Brian's advice and before I started loading things on to this machine i should have taken off all the bloatware that came pre-installed, Sadly I didn't and I don't know what bits belong to which programmes now, so I'd be scared to scap anything that I might need. Next machine I'll do it properly.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

How very odd!

It must have been an Australian model :o)

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Goodness. That is just very bizarre.

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

I've heard of that happening, but it was always a case of someone accidentally typing the keyboard shortcut when they meant to type something else. Do you have a tech savvy poltergeist in your home? :)

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

No, our resident ghost is a cat and there may be another one who looks like an undertaker - or possibly the Easter Bunny - according to my daughter. (It could be that the Easter Bunny and an undertaker share certain characteristics, but since I've never seen any of our supposedly resident ghosts, I'm not actually sure they exist.)

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

Oh, well a ghost cat explains everything! It must have walked across the keyboard when you sat back to talk to BB. :)