This Past Sunday... (part I)
Was a fascinating day. To begin the tale, we must go back in time a pace, to Saturday night.
I'm sitting at home, relaxing, surfing the internet. For some motive as yet unexplained by reason and modern psychiatry, I'm using IE 5.5 instead of Firefox. It's about 11 P.M., I'm minding my own business (though I should be in bed), when suddenly, my computer beings to process very furiously. Now, this happens every now and then, depending on what I have running in the background.
The combination of applications at that point was not one that normally produces furious CPU and hard disk action. I begin to grow concerned.
Said concern reaches what I thought was a zenith of intensity as I press CTRL+ALT+DEL to call up the list of what programs are running at the time.
I do not recognize a good one quarter of the programs on the list. The zenith, I realize, was little more than a piddling lookout point facing a rice paddy, with a sign that points towards a darkened, weaving trail that winds and coils it's way into a dense, Mirkwood-esque forrest.
Did I mention that the winding path is one of those automatic horizontal-escalators you see at some airports and gigantic malls? Except this one is covered in a superglue-cement mix.
Drawn inexorably forward towards certain OS doom, unable to escape and knowing that there is no Thranduil waiting in the woods to great me with wine and meat; I am on my own and my only defense is a rusty blade from Dunland.
From the CTRL+ALT+DEL menu I proceed to shut down the anomolous programs. Some are running twice, none die easily; most required two presses of the shutdown button before the "Program Not Responding" box would appear.
Such was not the end of my travails; I continued to hack away at the spiders with the Dunland blade, wishing that I had an elven blade, even just a dagger, one that I might have more confidence in it's forged bite than I do my own.
In the end, a blade of elven smithery would have been fortuitous, as it turned out that orcs were near.
Knowing that whatever set the programs to running had probably installed something a little more permament (to snipe me in the rear when my guard is down and I'm not working, the viperous spawn of perdition...> I proceed to the Control Panel and call up Add/Remove Programs.
Yup. Not a whole lot of unauthorized stuff, but enough to make me nervous. It is a simply matter, or it should be; highlight the program, press the "Remove" button, and click okay when asked.
But always read the questions, as I half expect one of these "applications" to someday request my immortal soul and the right to consume my bowels when I die.
Most of these "Remove" actions go all right. Two do not.
One succeeds on the second time. The second produces yet more furious CPU processing and hard drive access; the computer begins, as the fellow in the AOL commercial says, to make the sound of a Yeti.
I close the Add/Remove Programs window and the Control Panel. The noise and access stops. Okay, I think to myself, it's probably over now. I'll just go into msconfig and make sure that nothing... unnecessary starts with Windows.
As I move the mouse to the Start button, I glance at the left side of the desktop.
*%^*@#!!
The Recycle Bin, My Documents Folder, My Briefcase Folder, and Internet Explorer Icons have all SIMPLY VANISHED INTO THE DIGITAL ETHER. Discovering a new definition of the "zenith of concern" as I contemplate the loss of the My Documents folder, I proceed to feel a STONE FORMING IN MY GUT as I watch my computer slowly SHED ITSELF in much the same way that Vladimir Komarov's Soyuz I spacecraft did on it's ill-fated maiden voyage.
I can no longer run programs by clicking on their icons, either on the desktop on on the quick-start bar. The only start menu function that woks in the Run window; from that I see that "My Documents" has indeed disappeared from the hard drive, and from experiment that most of the programs are well nigh dead.
By the time I recovered my mind enough to hit CTRL+ALT+DEL twice for reboot, all the icons on the desktop had gone to the default windows icon (white background with the small flying windows thingy in the middle) instead of their program specific images.
I tell myself not to panic; perhaps, I rationalize, this is some passing thing, and will recover with the reboot. Yes, that is it; a reboot solves all.
"General Protection Fault yadda yadda yadda in module explorer.exe". At boot-up.
*&*^#^%#!!! Orc ambush. I curse my lack of elven steel as I am carried towards the torture pits of Dol Goldur.
Needless to say, this means that my computer WILL NOT START, and I cannot remember which key to press, or when, to bring up the start-up options.
Fortunately, I have a Hewlett-Packard, so I have another option: the Recovery CD. This is a CD-ROM, that is bootable, that contains all the information that was originally installed on the computer.
Hoo-ray! I can recover!
I plug the CD in during one of the stare-at-non-functioning-windows moments, then reboot the computer. Boot up, go through a few menus, installation begins.
I go lie down. It is now well after 1 A.M., and I am tired. I can't sleep; I am overcome with worry and unabashed trepidation for the contents of the "My Documents" directory. I rise from my bed and return to my computer a while later.
The install has completed.
Now, some of you may remember that a few months back I reformated the C: drive and did a reinstall, just to try and fix some system instability. You may also remember that I discovered a conflict centering around the second hard disk and the CD-ROM: Windows 98, at the original install, would only recognize and access one, and not the other.
Yes, it was the same case again. Wearily, and still somewhat a captive of the orcs (though my captors have now been waylaid by on of Thranduil's hunting bands), I shut the computer down and proceed to bed.
More to follow
I'm sitting at home, relaxing, surfing the internet. For some motive as yet unexplained by reason and modern psychiatry, I'm using IE 5.5 instead of Firefox. It's about 11 P.M., I'm minding my own business (though I should be in bed), when suddenly, my computer beings to process very furiously. Now, this happens every now and then, depending on what I have running in the background.
The combination of applications at that point was not one that normally produces furious CPU and hard disk action. I begin to grow concerned.
Said concern reaches what I thought was a zenith of intensity as I press CTRL+ALT+DEL to call up the list of what programs are running at the time.
I do not recognize a good one quarter of the programs on the list. The zenith, I realize, was little more than a piddling lookout point facing a rice paddy, with a sign that points towards a darkened, weaving trail that winds and coils it's way into a dense, Mirkwood-esque forrest.
Did I mention that the winding path is one of those automatic horizontal-escalators you see at some airports and gigantic malls? Except this one is covered in a superglue-cement mix.
Drawn inexorably forward towards certain OS doom, unable to escape and knowing that there is no Thranduil waiting in the woods to great me with wine and meat; I am on my own and my only defense is a rusty blade from Dunland.
From the CTRL+ALT+DEL menu I proceed to shut down the anomolous programs. Some are running twice, none die easily; most required two presses of the shutdown button before the "Program Not Responding" box would appear.
Such was not the end of my travails; I continued to hack away at the spiders with the Dunland blade, wishing that I had an elven blade, even just a dagger, one that I might have more confidence in it's forged bite than I do my own.
In the end, a blade of elven smithery would have been fortuitous, as it turned out that orcs were near.
Knowing that whatever set the programs to running had probably installed something a little more permament (to snipe me in the rear when my guard is down and I'm not working, the viperous spawn of perdition...> I proceed to the Control Panel and call up Add/Remove Programs.
Yup. Not a whole lot of unauthorized stuff, but enough to make me nervous. It is a simply matter, or it should be; highlight the program, press the "Remove" button, and click okay when asked.
But always read the questions, as I half expect one of these "applications" to someday request my immortal soul and the right to consume my bowels when I die.
Most of these "Remove" actions go all right. Two do not.
One succeeds on the second time. The second produces yet more furious CPU processing and hard drive access; the computer begins, as the fellow in the AOL commercial says, to make the sound of a Yeti.
I close the Add/Remove Programs window and the Control Panel. The noise and access stops. Okay, I think to myself, it's probably over now. I'll just go into msconfig and make sure that nothing... unnecessary starts with Windows.
As I move the mouse to the Start button, I glance at the left side of the desktop.
*%^*@#!!
The Recycle Bin, My Documents Folder, My Briefcase Folder, and Internet Explorer Icons have all SIMPLY VANISHED INTO THE DIGITAL ETHER. Discovering a new definition of the "zenith of concern" as I contemplate the loss of the My Documents folder, I proceed to feel a STONE FORMING IN MY GUT as I watch my computer slowly SHED ITSELF in much the same way that Vladimir Komarov's Soyuz I spacecraft did on it's ill-fated maiden voyage.
I can no longer run programs by clicking on their icons, either on the desktop on on the quick-start bar. The only start menu function that woks in the Run window; from that I see that "My Documents" has indeed disappeared from the hard drive, and from experiment that most of the programs are well nigh dead.
By the time I recovered my mind enough to hit CTRL+ALT+DEL twice for reboot, all the icons on the desktop had gone to the default windows icon (white background with the small flying windows thingy in the middle) instead of their program specific images.
I tell myself not to panic; perhaps, I rationalize, this is some passing thing, and will recover with the reboot. Yes, that is it; a reboot solves all.
"General Protection Fault yadda yadda yadda in module explorer.exe". At boot-up.
*&*^#^%#!!! Orc ambush. I curse my lack of elven steel as I am carried towards the torture pits of Dol Goldur.
Needless to say, this means that my computer WILL NOT START, and I cannot remember which key to press, or when, to bring up the start-up options.
Fortunately, I have a Hewlett-Packard, so I have another option: the Recovery CD. This is a CD-ROM, that is bootable, that contains all the information that was originally installed on the computer.
Hoo-ray! I can recover!
I plug the CD in during one of the stare-at-non-functioning-windows moments, then reboot the computer. Boot up, go through a few menus, installation begins.
I go lie down. It is now well after 1 A.M., and I am tired. I can't sleep; I am overcome with worry and unabashed trepidation for the contents of the "My Documents" directory. I rise from my bed and return to my computer a while later.
The install has completed.
Now, some of you may remember that a few months back I reformated the C: drive and did a reinstall, just to try and fix some system instability. You may also remember that I discovered a conflict centering around the second hard disk and the CD-ROM: Windows 98, at the original install, would only recognize and access one, and not the other.
Yes, it was the same case again. Wearily, and still somewhat a captive of the orcs (though my captors have now been waylaid by on of Thranduil's hunting bands), I shut the computer down and proceed to bed.
More to follow
posted by Wes at 9:46 PM
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