Saturday, January 09, 2010
"Re-install"
Yesterday I had received a call from a friend of the family stating he had seen some kind of error message and he couldn't get rid of it and now the computer was in some kind of infinite reboot loop. So I went up today to work on it.
Sure enough it was just rebooting over and over. No form of safe mode or CLI-only mode would work. Fortunately I still had the customized XP install disc I had made for him six months ago so the re-install would go that much faster. Unfortunately this customized disc, though great, actually auto-skipped through the setup to the partition selection screen, which meant no option for "repair" via the disc. I mean I guess at most I could have run a chekdsk or something. I don't remember if SFC is a command from the recovery console.
This reminded me of several things:
- make a customized disc fine but keep a normal XP disc around as well
- and that I should add that recovery console option to the XP boot screen as part of the install. I don't know if that would have worked in this case but I should do it anyway
It's also emphasized to me that much more I should really make more progress on this project that has been circulating in my head for at least eight months if not longer.
So I installed a new copy of windows along side the old copy so the guy wouldn't lose any data. Although I didn't actually map any data back to his new profile now that I think about it. And wow there's apparently been a lot of updates and stuff released in the last six months. And I know it has been six months on account of me and my weird detail-orientedness that made me put a date on his install disc of June 8th. So yeah almost six months to the day.
On a separate note I guess I will mention that about 14 months ago when I bought a new wireless keyboard/mouse combo I also bought this cover for the keyboard that was theoretically going to keep all the germs and whatever crap out of it so I wouldn't have to pop all the keys off and clean it out all the time. Well 14 months late I start to realize perhaps I should take this cover, or for lack of a better term "keyboard condom", off the keyboard and give it a good wash to get any germs or virii or whatever off of the cover.
Well the keyboard underneath was certainly clean and new but I think the cover was possibly air tight because the keys feel all sticky as if the paint is coming off or something. So I switched to my trusty mostly-LAN-party/backup USB keyboard. Which is working pretty well actually. Apparently I need to take the cover off and let the keyboard be exposed to oxygen every so often. Right?
And finally, strangely enough I still haven't even attempted to purchase those shelves I mentioned a few posts ago. You know, the ones symbolizing my willingness or lack there of to really make it through a job interview successfully. Ya that. I don't know something else always seems to come up. I have to re-install a PC. I'm jogging. I bought parts for a new PC. Blah-blah-blah. I don't think I'll have an excuse tomorrow. Tomorrow should be the day I do it.
¶ 7:54 PM 
