Computers = Love/Hate Relationship

Sunday 3 June 07
So I really do love my laptop...until today. I opened up, checked my email, looked at a website or 2 and then logged onto World of Warcraft (Yes I am a geek). I managed to say good morning to some folks and was just walking around ... BLAM my computer turns OFF

and proceeds to reboot itself. I'm sitting there thinking, "Gosh, it hasn't done this since it used to overheat ... and it's no where near hot yet."

Next thing I know, it just hangs before it loads windows ... I'm staring and a black screen and it's not doing anything ...

So to make a long boring technical troubleshooting story short ...

Some file or something is corrupt on my laptop. I have 2 options at this point. I can reinstall the OS (Windows XP) and lose all my data (I use my laptop to work) or I can put a Windows XP CD in and hit R to repair. Now, for those of you that aren't computer techies, the handy dandy little CD that comes with your beautiful computer when you buy it does not have this repair feature. You can only REINSTALL from this helpful looking CD. So now I have to find someone with a REAL Windows XP CD or buy one to see if this little repair feature will actually work.

In the meantime, I'm on my beautiful Windows 98 machine unless I'm at work.

Monday 4 June 07
Well ... with not much of an explanation ... I've managed to load windows and here I am typing this from my laptop ...

I wanted to try the repair option before anything drastic was done and any data potentially lost ... so I went to The Computer Place (they service Toshibas and serviced mine there in the past) to ask if they had a full win xp cd so I could try hitting R for repair to see what that would do. After some talking, the guy that has helped me in the past, got a CD from one of their techs. It wasn't an official XP CD but had it written on it. So I popped it in, booted it my computer from the CD Rom and followed directions by hitting R for repair. It asked me which drive ... only one choice ... then asked me for the administrator password. I tried 3 times and it wouldn't accept any of my passwords and said since I tried 3 times I had to hit enter to restart the computer ... so I did ... went through the whole 3 minute reboot, got back to where I was, tried 3 more times ... still wouldn't accept any password I tried.

I decided I would try one last time and did the restart ... turned to talk to the guy that had helped me earlier and told him I was stuck because of the password (I wasn't allowed to ask any questions since I was borrowing the cd and not paying them, etc) ... forgot to hit F12 because I was talking to him ... the next thing I know Windows XP loaded and I'm looking at my desktop!!!! So I bought a memory stick since I had forgotten mine and put everything I thought important on it just in case I could never come back to windows again. Then shut down the laptop, handed back the cd, and headed home.

I turned it back on when I got home and sure enough windows seems to be ok.

Tuesday 5 June 07
Well, my windows was short lived on my laptop. I woke up this morning to no windows. Back to the drawing board. At least I was able to back up my work files yesterday. I'm still gonna try and fix it without wiping everything ... though it is tempting just to do a reinstall.