Click here to restart your heart...
Okay, so Windows installs a batch of totally innocuous-looking updates to Office, little bugfixy things, and then wants me to restart, which is complete bullshit because Vista is supposed to drastically reduce the number of such reboots that are required, but I'll accept that. So I shut down my various little tasks and programs and click Restart.
And get a BSOD. A completely nondescript BSOD, without even a .DLL listing to tell me what the hell is broken.
On my new laptop. The one that's barely a week out of shrinkwrap? That one? That I bought to replace the previous one that'd been BSODing on boot with startling regularity? That one. The one I'm entrusting all my left-brain activity to.
So I restart it again. A Dell diagnostic system lights up and asks me to choose which Windows install I want to repair.
From a list going from... let's see, zero, all the way to NOTHING. It seems my hard drive isn't there! On my new laptop. The one I mentioned just a second ago being less than a WEEK OLD. Bastard had the temerity to ask me for a DRIVER DISK. Yeah, you didn't GIVE me one of those, you Texas-dwelling, Mumbai-support-employing sunsabitches, just a Big Red Button disk that'll nuke all the data on the drive and restore it to the state it was in when I took it out of the box. You know, the state where MY PRECIOUS PERSONAL DATA isn't ON it any more.
Being a stubborn bitch when it comes to hardware, I just clicked on through. Let's pretend, I thought, just for the sake of argument, that the diagnostic system is full of crap. Let's further pretend that one of these tools will actually fix the problem anyway. Let's hope, I said, that at least one of these diagnostic tools was written by a developer with a tester leaning over his shoulder saying, "Very good. Now, if you'll set it up to try to recover C: by default if it can't find any other obvious partitions, you may remove the cap and bells and I'll stop putting bricks and mortar over your doorway. After that, if your program actually works, we'll see about getting you out of those chains." Well, tester, if you're reading this, pour that guy a nice glass of Amontillado, because the button labelled "Repair Startup Files" magically worked, even though "Restore Last Good State" and "Find Last Windows Restore Point" didn't.
It's not like I had that much new stuff on the damn machine, but some of it was important. And maybe it was a bit of hubris for me to have said to Ketina earlier today, "It's good to be able to rely on my computer again, finally." But Hell and hotcakes, I do NOT need that level of adrenaline poisoning! *sigh* So I guess I'll be backing up weekly now instead of monthly like a sane person.
It's more aggravating because I actually really LIKE the new machine. It's an Inspiron 1520, with- What? Yes, apparently it's one of those colored ones. Yeah, from the commercials on TV that everyone in the world has seen except for me. With- What? Uh, Spring Green. Yes, in addition to being highly technically minded and getting top-spec hardware I also managed to feed my girly side and get a laptop that matches most of my outfits. Sad or cool? You be the judge. :)
Anyhow, if I can figure out what tester-fu I'm doing with my personal bioelectric field that's frying everything I touch, I will be a MUCH happier girl. I really don't know how I'd get a damn thing done if I was no longer able to keep a working laptop around.
And get a BSOD. A completely nondescript BSOD, without even a .DLL listing to tell me what the hell is broken.
On my new laptop. The one that's barely a week out of shrinkwrap? That one? That I bought to replace the previous one that'd been BSODing on boot with startling regularity? That one. The one I'm entrusting all my left-brain activity to.
So I restart it again. A Dell diagnostic system lights up and asks me to choose which Windows install I want to repair.
From a list going from... let's see, zero, all the way to NOTHING. It seems my hard drive isn't there! On my new laptop. The one I mentioned just a second ago being less than a WEEK OLD. Bastard had the temerity to ask me for a DRIVER DISK. Yeah, you didn't GIVE me one of those, you Texas-dwelling, Mumbai-support-employing sunsabitches, just a Big Red Button disk that'll nuke all the data on the drive and restore it to the state it was in when I took it out of the box. You know, the state where MY PRECIOUS PERSONAL DATA isn't ON it any more.
Being a stubborn bitch when it comes to hardware, I just clicked on through. Let's pretend, I thought, just for the sake of argument, that the diagnostic system is full of crap. Let's further pretend that one of these tools will actually fix the problem anyway. Let's hope, I said, that at least one of these diagnostic tools was written by a developer with a tester leaning over his shoulder saying, "Very good. Now, if you'll set it up to try to recover C: by default if it can't find any other obvious partitions, you may remove the cap and bells and I'll stop putting bricks and mortar over your doorway. After that, if your program actually works, we'll see about getting you out of those chains." Well, tester, if you're reading this, pour that guy a nice glass of Amontillado, because the button labelled "Repair Startup Files" magically worked, even though "Restore Last Good State" and "Find Last Windows Restore Point" didn't.
It's not like I had that much new stuff on the damn machine, but some of it was important. And maybe it was a bit of hubris for me to have said to Ketina earlier today, "It's good to be able to rely on my computer again, finally." But Hell and hotcakes, I do NOT need that level of adrenaline poisoning! *sigh* So I guess I'll be backing up weekly now instead of monthly like a sane person.
It's more aggravating because I actually really LIKE the new machine. It's an Inspiron 1520, with- What? Yes, apparently it's one of those colored ones. Yeah, from the commercials on TV that everyone in the world has seen except for me. With- What? Uh, Spring Green. Yes, in addition to being highly technically minded and getting top-spec hardware I also managed to feed my girly side and get a laptop that matches most of my outfits. Sad or cool? You be the judge. :)
Anyhow, if I can figure out what tester-fu I'm doing with my personal bioelectric field that's frying everything I touch, I will be a MUCH happier girl. I really don't know how I'd get a damn thing done if I was no longer able to keep a working laptop around.