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Well, with so many people having computer problems this seems to be the most appropriate place to get sympathy. (Skip to the last paragraph if you would prefer a short summary to reading all my bull****).
Although you probably haven't noticed; I haven't been around for a couple days. On Wednesday I purposely disemboweled my laptop for some diagnostics because it has been running a little hot lately. After a couple hours of dismembering it (Notebooks have way too many screws) and cleaning it I determined that the problem was due to dry/crusty heat sink compound on the processor. So, I did what any computer-addict would do and I rushed out to my local radio-shack for a tube (or two) of their cheapest heat-sink so I could have my computer when I went to work that night.
I got everything done just in time to go to work and I packed it up and took off. My computer was fine all night long; I spent virtually my entire shift on Paint-Shop-Pro goofing off and making stuff like the banner you see in my sig (I spent about 3 hours on one banner just to lose it when PSP crashed once and then I spent about half an hour on the one I ended up with). 7am rolled around and I shut it down and packed it up to finish my shift's paper work.
Thursday evening: I woke up at 5:30 and per usual I went right to my computer (I may have said good morning to my wife on the way to my pc. I know, I know, she's a lucky woman). On startup I got the dreaded: "missing C:\windows\system32\config\system press r to repair" screen. This absolutely boggles my mind.
My first reaction (after the line of obscenities vulgar enough to make General George Patton himself blush) is to pop my XP Pro disk in the drive and try to bring up my recovery console. No luck. Every time I tried this it froze on "Searching for previous version of Windows". I took the drive out and hooked it up to my external case and put it in my desktop and I loaded GetDataBack NTFS up to see if I could spare any of my precious files but again: No luck (Continue reading, you'll see a trend in my luck).
After four hours of trying to get a recovery console going I had to give up and go to work, so I packed up my laptop and grabbed all my windows discs and was out the door. Once I got to work I tried my XP Home edition disk and got right into the console (go figure). I attempted to repair the windows installation with every command that I know but nothing worked so I gave up on trying to save the installation and decided I would at least try to save some data. I installed XP Home to run beside XP Pro.
Once I got XP Home to start up I was able to get into my My Documents folder and snake all my precious data which I threw on my 1TB External drive (This was the only stuff that was really important to me). I restarted my computer when I was done only to find that the XP Home edition that I JUST installed was corrupt too. If you know computers you're probably thinking "That means you've got a bad sector". Well, you're right.
So now, after 13 hours of wrestling with Bill Gates's demon spawn I've managed to quarantine the section of my hard drive that has a bad sector and get my computer to the point that it will actually run Windows (Had to partition C:=500mb (windows boot information will only install on the first drive for some odd reason) D:=12gb (Bad Sector is somewhere on there), and E:=66gb). I accomplished all that on Friday morning. Tonight I just finally finished installing all the drivers and software necessary to get me back on to the internet.
I have no idea what would have caused a bad sector on my drive. I'm very careful when opening up my computer and only use non-magnetized tools and such when I'm working on it. It also doesn't make any sense to me that the problem didn't show up until a day after I worked on it. I believe both events are coincidental but thats a pretty big coincidence.
With all said and done: I spent roughly 16 hours working on my computer and am now 12gb short on a drive that was already too small to begin with. Also, I don't have NWN2 installed now so it may be a few days before you see me on Sundren again.
Although you probably haven't noticed; I haven't been around for a couple days. On Wednesday I purposely disemboweled my laptop for some diagnostics because it has been running a little hot lately. After a couple hours of dismembering it (Notebooks have way too many screws) and cleaning it I determined that the problem was due to dry/crusty heat sink compound on the processor. So, I did what any computer-addict would do and I rushed out to my local radio-shack for a tube (or two) of their cheapest heat-sink so I could have my computer when I went to work that night.
I got everything done just in time to go to work and I packed it up and took off. My computer was fine all night long; I spent virtually my entire shift on Paint-Shop-Pro goofing off and making stuff like the banner you see in my sig (I spent about 3 hours on one banner just to lose it when PSP crashed once and then I spent about half an hour on the one I ended up with). 7am rolled around and I shut it down and packed it up to finish my shift's paper work.
Thursday evening: I woke up at 5:30 and per usual I went right to my computer (I may have said good morning to my wife on the way to my pc. I know, I know, she's a lucky woman). On startup I got the dreaded: "missing C:\windows\system32\config\system press r to repair" screen. This absolutely boggles my mind.
My first reaction (after the line of obscenities vulgar enough to make General George Patton himself blush) is to pop my XP Pro disk in the drive and try to bring up my recovery console. No luck. Every time I tried this it froze on "Searching for previous version of Windows". I took the drive out and hooked it up to my external case and put it in my desktop and I loaded GetDataBack NTFS up to see if I could spare any of my precious files but again: No luck (Continue reading, you'll see a trend in my luck).
After four hours of trying to get a recovery console going I had to give up and go to work, so I packed up my laptop and grabbed all my windows discs and was out the door. Once I got to work I tried my XP Home edition disk and got right into the console (go figure). I attempted to repair the windows installation with every command that I know but nothing worked so I gave up on trying to save the installation and decided I would at least try to save some data. I installed XP Home to run beside XP Pro.
Once I got XP Home to start up I was able to get into my My Documents folder and snake all my precious data which I threw on my 1TB External drive (This was the only stuff that was really important to me). I restarted my computer when I was done only to find that the XP Home edition that I JUST installed was corrupt too. If you know computers you're probably thinking "That means you've got a bad sector". Well, you're right.
So now, after 13 hours of wrestling with Bill Gates's demon spawn I've managed to quarantine the section of my hard drive that has a bad sector and get my computer to the point that it will actually run Windows (Had to partition C:=500mb (windows boot information will only install on the first drive for some odd reason) D:=12gb (Bad Sector is somewhere on there), and E:=66gb). I accomplished all that on Friday morning. Tonight I just finally finished installing all the drivers and software necessary to get me back on to the internet.
I have no idea what would have caused a bad sector on my drive. I'm very careful when opening up my computer and only use non-magnetized tools and such when I'm working on it. It also doesn't make any sense to me that the problem didn't show up until a day after I worked on it. I believe both events are coincidental but thats a pretty big coincidence.
With all said and done: I spent roughly 16 hours working on my computer and am now 12gb short on a drive that was already too small to begin with. Also, I don't have NWN2 installed now so it may be a few days before you see me on Sundren again.
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