Fun Weekend!

[Ausimax]

Woe is me!  Have been having some troubles with my computer for some week so I decided it was time to take courage in hand and do a clean install of Windows XP.

Backed up all my files to an external hard drive, and on Friday morning set to work.
Formatted the drive and started the installation of XP, four hours later after installing XP, Service Pack 2 downloading and installing SP3 and innumerable other updates, installing motherboard , video and sound drivers and installing all the hardware, scanner, printer. Graphics tablet and all the other associated junk, I was feeling quite pleased with my progress.

Next step was to install Ghost and make a backup image of my nice clean system, that's when disaster struck, Ghost went into DOS mode and froze, wouldn't accept any DOS input commands – shut down and restarted, still frozen, reset BIOS to boot from CD and tried to restart from the Windows disk to repair windows and see if that would work, still no joy, bypasses straight to DOS and remains frozen.

Next tried the Ghost recovery floppy disk, loaded and it froze, by this time another hour or more had passed and multiple restarts had been made without any success, so as a last resort before the Axe, I dug out an old Windows 98 startup disk and tried booting from that – success it booted, so I went to Fdisk and reset the Windows partition back to active and tried rebooting into Windows. Voila! Success.

All now seemed resolved, however when I ran Partition Magic it wouldn't recognize the system partition – alas all was not well! So back to the Win 98 disk and Fdisk and have another look, sure enough there was a temporary DOS partition installed by Ghost in the system partition, I deleted that partition and rebooted to Windows, back to Partition Magic which now recognizes all the partitions – success at last. Not willing to try my luck with Ghost again I downloaded a trial copy of Acronis True Image and successfully created an image of the system partition.

By this time I had had enough for the day and quit!

Saturday morning, up and at it! Reinstalled Photoshop, got to the activation bit and ti wouldn't accept the activation code, nor would it proceed or shut down, managed to get it minimized and tried to open Control Panel to uninstall Photoshop, whoops Photoshop again, didn't matter what I tried all I got was a frozen Photoshop, shutdown and restart would not resolve the problem, still Photoshop.

Next brainwave, reboot from the XP CD and repair Windows from there, duly ran the repair application it reinstalls all the windows files – then error message " Can't access DLL.$^@.  Please load the Service Pack I CD ". Service Pack I  CD? Never heard of one, so I tried the SP2 CD, that wasn't what it wanted. So on to Margaret's computer and after much searching find a downloadable copy of Service Pack I , download it and burn to a CD.

Restart the whole process again, when it gets to the point of wanting SP1 it just stops and will proceed no further, won't ask for SP 1 just stops.

Back to square one, Format the drive and commence the whole reinstallation process again. By 7:00 PM Saturday I'm almost back to where I was that time on Friday – this time before I load another thing I install Photoshop, everything goes without a glitch, can only assume that Ghost had corrupted some files in the system.

Sunday was spent Installing hardware, all the updates again, and installing all the needed programs and trying to get everything back to how I am used of it working.

The moral of this story if you ever have a weekend with nothing to do and you are bored – reinstall your operation system.  Its FUN!


Max

[glennab]

One word, my beloved Max:

MacIntosh!

Never, in all my days at work or at home have I had that much tragedy with my computers.  They run like champions!  I'd never go to a PC!  Never, ever!!!!!

Hugs,

GK

[Hannie]

I feel your pain Max, i have done a similar thing last year!  I also couldn't get Ghost to work and ended up using Acronis True Image, great back up software, never a problem since.
I'm glad all your efforts paid off!  (smart thinking using that win98 disk)

Glenna, you are so right but there is another side to this story:  we just love to tinker with our pc from time to time.  The triumph when it finally works out and everything runs smoothly and fast, nothing comes close to that feeling!   ;)

Hannie

[Ausimax]

Glenna!  MacIntosh?  I thought that was something you wore when you were going out in the rain! :funny:

Why would you deny yourself the excitement and adventure of "do it yourself" computer repairs, owning a Mac sounds so Boring, never the thrill of wondering if it will start today, or come to that even shut down. Get a life Glenna, get a PC. :crazy:

Hannie that's half the fun of owning a PC, that feeling of personal involvement - I hadn't had trouble with Ghost before, about the only Norton's product I hadn't, I was copying to an Iomega external drive and it seems that ghost has problems with Iomega drivers, well I'm afraid Ghost will have to be content haunting the waste bin after this. :knuppel:


Max

[glennab]

My beloved Hannie AND my beloved Max

One additional word: MASOCHIST!

GK

[schen]

Glenna,

There is something about men with the yearning to fix things.  We used to tinker with automobiles but the only thing you can do with the late models is to plug in the ODBII and read the display.  Luckily, we still have PC's.  Can't imaging what we are going to do if the world is taken over by the Mac's.

Shujen

[Deborahjc]

I just had to weigh in on this one!   I agree with Glenna!  We bought a Mac 5 years ago after a similar problem with our PC (nicknamed Demon) and haven't had a problem since.  We have 2 imacs and one mac book and it would take a lot to go back to a pc.  Of course you have to be able to handle the kind of free time a Mac system will give you.  Oh yea one other side affect you become annoyingly protective of all things apple related.  My "PC" friends think I have joined a apple cult!

Deb

[glennab]

Shujen & Debrorah – Think of all the restorations that could be done with the free time available when one is not constantly working to keep a PC going! What a concept!

Iron Man is forever hollering at his HP.  Half the time I have to go rescue him before he has a stroke.

I'm going to throw this in just for fun.  I heard it this morning when listening to my podcast of the last NPR "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me!"  Someone found a worm (a real formerly-alive but at that point mushed) worm in the fan of their computer (probably brought in and dropped near the computer by one of their cats).  It evidently crawled into the computer and caused a bit of an uproar until its remains were found.  The parting words of the WWDTM host was: "If you don't want a worm in your computer, don't get an Apple!"

GK

[Tess (Tassie D)]

Good on you Max for getting it going again.

For all the Mac v Pc users, a little humour.

[Ausimax]

Nice one Tassie!


All the Mac users owe us PC users a great debt of gratitude, if Apple had become the dominant computer system, every disaffected genius who can write a line of code, would be compiling worms, viruses and rootkits for Mac's. >:D

Then Mac's would have all the problems of the PC, constantly upgrading to try and stay in front of, or only slightly behind the spoilers. With all the associated problems of an operating system becoming overwhelmed by its own size and complexity. :'(

So Mac users, get down on your knees and pay homage to Bill Gates and all the PC users for protecting you from this scourge. :up:


Max

[Ausimax]

OK! Now I'm getting worried. Where's Glenna? I scorn the beloved Mac and no response! She must be feeling poorly, come to that jokes aside, I haven't seen a post from her for days.

Are you still with us GK?


Max

[glennab]

Thanks for checking on me, Max!

I'm here, but still in therapy for whiplash and trying to get things done despite the discomfort.  (I thought whiplash was a hokey way for people to con insurance companies.  NOT!)

I'm saving up a dissertation on PC vs. Mac when I'm back in the world.  (When I worked at my last job I was friends with a guy in the art department – a PC "weenie" – who'd call me a "Mac-hole." Needless to say we had some interesting discussions!)  There's a cute video on wherethehellismatt.com in which Matt is telling his story to a group at a Mac World convention.  When he got ready to show his videos, he opened a PC laptop and the crowd made rude noises at him (in fun, of course).  So he whips out his I-Phone and flashes it at everyone to calm them down.  Very cute.  Even better, the host then asked if he could have his I-Phone back.

I miss all of you.  I'm lurking, and I'll be back.  Hugs!

GK

[TerryB]

SOME of us have been with PCs for so long that our situation not unlike Linus and his security blanket http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus_van_Pelt

Granted, the PC is predictably unpredictable, but its virtually infinite configuration possibilities regularly provide a very rewarding WOW! factor. And then there are those hardware/software workarounds not inherent in a Mac.

And relatively inexpensive compared to Mac hardware.  Not to mention all of the free and reasonably-priced apps out there for the PC.  PLUS, all of the PC software I already have.

I'm fixin' to get ready to maybe start thinking about a replacement for this remarkably reliable, five-year-old local-build white box PC which has suffered through hundreds and hundreds of hours of video editing and photo restorations with nary a grunt from me or the computer.

I have been polling my PC and Mac friends for words of wisdom and/or suggestions as to which platform I should consider; any suggestions from OPR volunteers would be gratefully appreciated.  Heavy-duty use will be mostly video editing and photo restoration.  No gaming or database.

Decisions, decisions, decisions.

Sorry if this is not in the correct Forum; I was following Max' thread.

[Tori803]

TerryB -
I've been using a PC to for forever. My first was a Packard *ell from Walmart which was wonderful with Windows 3.1, but after being upgraded to Win95 was so buggy I finally had to make a list of procedures to follow to restore it each time it crashed. Since then I've purchased my PCs from Dell and haven't had any problems EXCEPT that much of my old software would not run on Windows Vista. Fortunately, Photoshop CS2, InDesign CS2, and Illustrator CS2 worked fine in Vista. QuarkXpress 5.3 would not work at all and I had to purchase 7.1.

So, if you're going to have to upgrade your software anyway, it might be time to consider switching to a Mac. If you know your software will run on Vista, then you'll have to decide if you want the extra expense of purchasing new software.

In any case, have fun shopping!

[TerryB]

Thanks, Tori803.
I neglected to say that Vista is most definitely NOT in my future; the new one, if it's a PC will have XP Pro, maybe Windows 7 later,  after the bugs are worked out.