Bill Gates is the devil ...

Well, not really, but I’m sure he knows him. After I finished posting to you good people last night, the mighty laptop decided to develop a case of amnesia. First it forgot how a Windows XP desktop should look (it reverted to the OLD windows), then it forgot how to make sounds (decided that I had no audio card installed). It became painfully obvious that the trusty laptop was rapidly spiraling into oblivion. This concerned me … greatly. After several hours of frustration (ask my wife how much I like computer problems), I discovered that the folks at Microsoft did this to me. During one of their never-ending updates (that go on whenever you’re online), the update was interrupted (most likely due to the fact that my internet connection speed is slightly above ‘snail’). Somehow, this damaged some Windows files, and it was only going to get worse. It was a bad night.

Thankfully, every time Microsoft comes up with a way to screw the consumer, our friends at the computer companies come up with a fix. I have been an HP guy for a bunch of years now, and they have a service called System Recovery. Microsoft has a service called System Restore. Microsoft’s system is supposed to allow you to revert back to a previous time in your computer’s life when all was right with the world (Imagine those few seconds after you put your foot in your mouth … gone). It’s a great idea, but I’ve never seen it actually work. Apparently, the first files to be corrupted on any computer are the System Restore files. I tried about ten restores, to no avail, and switched over to the recovery mode. Since Microsoft doesn’t give you the Windows disc anymore (anti-piracy Nazi’s), you don’t have that nice feature called “repair a broken installation.” HP’s answer to this was to put all of your necessary files in a hidden part of your hard drive (it costs you about 10 GB worth of space, but it’s well worth it). After spending several hours backing my data up to my external hard drive (Karen, it paid for itself today), I tried out the recovery. When you open this thing, it has two options: first, in giant bold letters it says, ‘DESTRUCTIVE RECOVERY’ - in other words, this thing is going to rip through your computer like a Roman legion - kind of scary when you think about it. Below that, in tiny letters, it says, “repair and replace” - the old Windows repair utility. Needless to say, I chose option two (hoping to save some data), and I’m back online. The first thing I did was to change the Windows Update option to ‘ask before loading.’ It’s been a long day.

-Grease out.