Stupid technology.
I am fairly certain my laptop's hard drive is conking out. After experiencing an increasing number of bizarre glitches and performance problems, and disk-check running itself several times, I decided to do a system restore. I know I had at least two restore points in there. This proved impossible. It failed to work several times.
Now, I had recently done a complete, clean re-install of Windows a couple months ago. Since anything crucial I wanted to keep was on my external HDD, I figured, what the hell? Let's do another one! First, I tried doing it from the drive itself, since the recovery program has its own partition on my 'puter. I got a Blue Screen of Death when I tried to get into the recovery mode. This was just fucking absurd. So I popped in my recovery disk, and booted up from that, and selected the full recovery option. This essentially nukes my hard drive completely and reloads Windows brand new.
This got me as far as the first screen in XP setup, albeit after some glitchiness in the very first stages, (after all the disks are loaded, the system reboots itself, and starts installing programs and drivers. Things were a bit wrong here, but I still had hope). The first setup screen is really just a sentence and a button telling you to go to the next screen. I clicked the button, and the next screen failed to load. It was entirely blank. Rebooting netted me a disk-check (which takes forever, and supposedly fixed bad data & looks for errors on the drive). After that, I was returned to the unloaded setup screen.
I tried to go into the safe-mode, but since Windows technically hadn't been set up, I couldn't do that. There were also no restore points from a previously stable configuration. Trying to enter the recovery/repair mode earned another BSOD.
This all repeated itself when I tried to reinstall from the disks.
I partially blame Gateway for this. I didn't get an actual, genuine Windows XP setup disk with the computer. I had to burn my own set when I got the damned thing. Because of this, I apparently don't have access to some tools that having the real disk provides. Like the ability to run my own disk check, which would be nice since the one that runs on its own is only checking D:. I'd like to be able to check C:, also. But I can't do that from BIOS or the boot menu, or the F8 safe-mode menu. I'd have to schedule it from Windows, which I cannot make work.
So I popped open the back of my laptop, and removed the drive. After a bit of research, I figured out what all the letters and numbers on the label mean, and which other letters and numbers are compatible with them. Armed with this knowledge, I ordered a new drive from AMazon, which will hopefully arrive Thursday. From there, it should be a simple matter to screw it into the sleeve, and screw the sleeve back into the bottom of my laptop. Hopefully, I will be able to install Windows with a minimum of hassle, and end up with a functional computer with about twice the storage I had before.
If this works, I may then upgrade the RAM, too.
If it doesn't, I may then cry. And then I dunno what.
Now, I had recently done a complete, clean re-install of Windows a couple months ago. Since anything crucial I wanted to keep was on my external HDD, I figured, what the hell? Let's do another one! First, I tried doing it from the drive itself, since the recovery program has its own partition on my 'puter. I got a Blue Screen of Death when I tried to get into the recovery mode. This was just fucking absurd. So I popped in my recovery disk, and booted up from that, and selected the full recovery option. This essentially nukes my hard drive completely and reloads Windows brand new.
This got me as far as the first screen in XP setup, albeit after some glitchiness in the very first stages, (after all the disks are loaded, the system reboots itself, and starts installing programs and drivers. Things were a bit wrong here, but I still had hope). The first setup screen is really just a sentence and a button telling you to go to the next screen. I clicked the button, and the next screen failed to load. It was entirely blank. Rebooting netted me a disk-check (which takes forever, and supposedly fixed bad data & looks for errors on the drive). After that, I was returned to the unloaded setup screen.
I tried to go into the safe-mode, but since Windows technically hadn't been set up, I couldn't do that. There were also no restore points from a previously stable configuration. Trying to enter the recovery/repair mode earned another BSOD.
This all repeated itself when I tried to reinstall from the disks.
I partially blame Gateway for this. I didn't get an actual, genuine Windows XP setup disk with the computer. I had to burn my own set when I got the damned thing. Because of this, I apparently don't have access to some tools that having the real disk provides. Like the ability to run my own disk check, which would be nice since the one that runs on its own is only checking D:. I'd like to be able to check C:, also. But I can't do that from BIOS or the boot menu, or the F8 safe-mode menu. I'd have to schedule it from Windows, which I cannot make work.
So I popped open the back of my laptop, and removed the drive. After a bit of research, I figured out what all the letters and numbers on the label mean, and which other letters and numbers are compatible with them. Armed with this knowledge, I ordered a new drive from AMazon, which will hopefully arrive Thursday. From there, it should be a simple matter to screw it into the sleeve, and screw the sleeve back into the bottom of my laptop. Hopefully, I will be able to install Windows with a minimum of hassle, and end up with a functional computer with about twice the storage I had before.
If this works, I may then upgrade the RAM, too.
If it doesn't, I may then cry. And then I dunno what.