My Windows machine just died.

I wanted to transfer some podcasts onto my iPod so that I don't have to carry my notebook around to listen to them. Straightforward enough. iTunes wanted to be updated, and I haven't allowed it to do so for a few months, so I said okay.

Then it wanted to reboot, of course. Whatever.

After rebooting, things were not good. The machine was grindingly slow, Firefox wouldn't run at all, generally craperiffic. Okay, let's do a hard reset and see what...

So \WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM is corrupted, huh? Well it was JUST FINE A MINUTE AGO!!

Now it wants my original Windows CD. That's something I have no shortage of, except that I need the one with built-in SP1 goodness, because this machine has a 200GB boot disk and Microsoft... Well, Microsoft are Microsoft.

Is it in my carefully-assembled CD folder? It is not.

Is it in the backup CD folder? It is not.

Is it... Well, there's not that many places it can be. I supposed I could look upstairs where the remaining boxes are, though the chance of my finding anything smaller than a water buffalo are mid-way between slim and oh, hello. (Update: Oops, no, that one doesn't have SP1 either.)

Well, let's see what it makes of it. Can't DIR the Windows directory, huh? Let's try a CHKDSK. Blah blah... One or more unrecoverable problems? You don't say. (Update: Which might be just because it's pre-SP1 and doesn't understand the disk geometry. Dunno. Probably not, since it could read the other drives okay, and they're larger.)

Yes, I'm grabbing a copy of Knoppix right now. And it's coming down at 1.8MB/sec, so it won't even take that long.

Update: Got Knoppix - just the CD version. Burned it to a DVD because I don't have any CD-R's, but it doesn't seem to think it's bootable.

Bleh.

I'll fix it tomorrow.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 10:16 PM | Comments (12) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

1 I feel really bad about this, but I can't help grinning. I have never in my life heard of someone with so many computer problems! Are you getting your hard drives from the refurbished discount bin or something?

I know it's not funny, and I feel bad for grinning.

Posted by: Kevin at August 08, 2006 12:14 AM (++0ve)

2 Fun, isn't it. Same thing happened to me Friday.



Difference is, this time I finally let go, and left it to the local
computer shop to sort out. I'm better off programming, than fooling
around with chkdsk, boot.ini, knoppix, and patching my system files
from a CD drive that conveniently died half way through the effort.
Enough computer frustrations already, without dealing with menial
chores like this.



Nice blog btw.

Posted by: Simon at August 08, 2006 08:52 AM (hOEsG)

3 Always remember the rules of kharma. My snickering bought me a stuck fan on my graphics card

Posted by: Kevin at August 08, 2006 09:11 AM (++0ve)

4 Glad to see that reality hasn't shifted at all. Pixy your computer problems multiple without bound.



Is the laptop sorted or are you still booting off a memory card ? At least thats where I remember you were last at.

Posted by: Andrew at August 08, 2006 09:31 AM (t8tOu)

5 About a month ago I got something similar. It wasn't from an update or anything. My primary hard drive just sort of lost it's MBR. I tried restoring to that wonderful 2-8 gig partition that comes standard as the "recovery partition". It laughed at me and told me I was a goober.

It was about five minutes later, as I began installing from scratch, (I keep all my good data on me second hard drive anyway.) that I discovered my "good" copy of WINXP was a tad old and didn't want to boot. Luckily, my son's game disk resurfacer/cleaner was handy and I managed to get it to limp into functionality. Otherwise I would have had a really fun time trying to find a new copy of WINXP on the internet from the functional copy of WIN95 I still have lying around.


...


Mostly I just wanted to drop in and say thanks for hosting this great community called Munuviana.

Posted by: Jeremy H. Bol at August 08, 2006 06:14 PM (PJ4Iq)

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