Tuesday, April 03, 2007

Crap Happens, Multiple Times

This past weekend and the weekend before I was looking forward to a great many things.

The weekend before last I had silently planned this writing marathon. Five thousand words in the course of a weekend, which is a lot of words for me. I didn't have much else on the agenda, so I figured it would be a great thing to do. Friday night as I am cooking dinner, I have my email up so I can browse and clean out the stuff I'm not keeping. I get up to stir what's cookin' on the stove and come back to a blue screen of death. Unmountable Boot Volume. Joy, oh wondrous joy.

Then I can't find the recovery disk that came with the computer. I've had it out before. I took it to my Mother-in-law's to try to fix her computer one day. Sometime after that it vanished. Then I realize I have another XP Professional disk that I bought to upgrade the other computer I have which I probably never see again because my brother won't bring it back.

I pop that disk in and then I get to the part where I need a password. And for some odd reason I actually set a password. Now I'm trying to recall what the password I set in 2003 might be. In the meantime, I keep searching for my original disk because the kind people over at Absolute Write gave me some tips & tricks.

Finally, frustrated beyond belief, I load the other disk. It takes two tries, but I eventually get my computer to load up.

Positive side: My data is intact and I can access my email.
Negative side: It seems that every piece of Microsoft software that I tried to utilize in the two spare minutes I had before leaving for work will not work. No Word. No Internet Explorer. And I need to download SP2 again.

So now I'm thinking that I shall order an external hard drive, wipe my computer clean and start fresh. No point in fixing all the programs. I just hope I don't have to do registry stuff, as I have no experience what-so-ever with that. Ah well, it's about time for another computer anyway.

1 comment:

Frank Baron said...

Ouch. You have my sympathies. Computers are the wilful, obstinate children of technology - there's no telling what they'll do next. I refer to mine as The Infernal Device. We can co-exist - but warily.