♠ Sunday, October 03, 2004
How to Fix a Computer, by Dave
Wow, this has been an amusing weekend.
Friday, Cactus Dave brought his computer over to play a couple of games, but while we were at dinner we decided that since his computer was so unstable, it would make sense to wipe the hard drive and re-install the operating system. So, after dinner, we went to Circuit City. Dave didn't like that Windows XP cost $200, especially since he already had a copy that he lost, so he bought the Windows XP Upgrade for $100, knowing that we could borrow a Windows 98 to upgrade from.
I don't know if it's possible to detail the entire journey, but it has gone something like this.
| 1. | Plug in Dave's computer. |
| 2. | Select the "C" drive and choose "Format." |
| 3. | Maybe not. Try it from a DOS prompt. |
| 12. | Put Dave's hard drive into my computer. |
| 13. | Notice that Norton finds at least six viruses as soon as I turn my computer on with Dave's hard drive installed. |
| 16. | Select the "F" drive and choose "Format." |
| 19. | Notice that Dave's computer won't boot from the CD. |
| 29. | Notice that booting from CD isn't even an option in the BIOS. |
| 34. | Download a boot floppy from the Internet. |
| 37. | Notice that the boot floppy insists that Dave's computer needs another partition. |
| 38. | Create the other partition. |
| 39. | Put Dave's hard drive into my computer. |
| 40. | Select the "G" drive and choose "Format." |
| 45. | Put Dave's hard drive into my computer. |
| 46. | Select the "F" drive and choose "Format." |
| 71. | Decide you didn't need the extra partition, anyway. |
| 89. | Discover that someone else in the house has a disk of Western Digital utilities. |
| 94. | Decide to low-level format the hard drive. |
| 95. | Put Dave's hard drive into my computer. |
| 101. | Call somebody else in the house to figure out why the WD disk isn't working. |
| 109. | Discover that instead of putting in the WD disk, you've put in a blank disk. |
| 115. | Finally figure out how to low-level format the hard drive. |
| 119. | Notice that Dave's computer still won't boot from the CD. |
| 135. | Put Dave's hard drive into my "B" computer. |
| 139. | Copy my "B" computer's hard drive onto Dave's hard drive. |
| 143. | Plug Dave's hard drive into the wrong ribbon cable. |
| 149. | Curse the gods for putting different hardware into Dave's computer than into my "B" computer. |
| 151. | Ask everybody in earshot what the hell a NTLDR is, and why it's missing. |
| 153. | Put Dave's hard drive into my computer. |
| 154. | Select the "F" drive and choose Format. |
| 171. | Copy my "B" computer's hard drive onto Dave's hard drive. |
| 181. | Get Windows 98 working well enough on Dave's computer that he can think about installing Windows XP. |
| 194. | Give up on installing Windows XP from Dave's computer because, once again, Dave's computer can't boot from the CD. |
| 211. | Put Dave's hard drive into my "B" computer. |
| 212. | Select the "F" drive and choose Format. |
| 215. | Copy my "B" computer's hard drive onto Dave's hard drive. |
| 224. | Disconnect the hard drive in my "B" computer and set Dave's hard drive to "Master." |
| 225. | Upgrade to Windows XP with Dave's hard drive in my "B" computer. |
| 227. | Gaze in amazement at my "B" computer, which has no freaking problem booting off the CD. |
| 231. | Put Dave's hard drive back into his computer. |
| 232. | Curse the gods for refusing to tell Dave what an NTLDR is, and why it's missing. |
| 235. | Use my computer to look up on the Internet how to fix a freaking NTLDR whatever-the-hell problem. |
| 252. | On the advice of a site probably written by somebody with as much sense as Dave, create a Windows 98 boot disk. |
| 261. | Notice that Windows is now confused, refusing to load Windows XP because it think's it's Windows 98, and refusing to load Windows 98 because it thinks it's Windows XP. |
| 270. | Put Dave's hard drive into my "B" computer. |
| 271. | Select the "F" drive and choose "Format." |
| 275. | Copy my "B" computer's hard drive to Dave's hard drive. |
| 284. | Upgrade Dave's hard drive to Windows XP. |
| 297. | Suffer a "Catastrophic disk failure," pressing any key to continue. |
| 299. | Notice that Dave's BIOS now provides the option of booting from CD. |
| 314. | Flummox around in trying to get Dave's computer to recognize the Internet. |
| 329. | Search the Internet for graphics drivers. |
| 335. | Discover that Dave's graphics card no longer works, and that the computer has reverted to the onboard graphics. |
| 336. | Eh ... at least he has graphics. |
| 338. | Attempt to install Everquest. |
| 339. | At "please insert Disk 2," curse the gods that the Everquest installer crashes. |
| 341. | Repeat steps 338-339. |
| 343. | Repeat steps 338-339. |
| 349. | Install Everquest off an older collection of CD's. |
| 353. | Give up, and go home and take a nap. |
You may refer to this list whenever you wish to fix your computer, because in only 353 easy steps you'll get so frustrated you'll be driven to taking a nap. Sweet dreams!
