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I'm posting this from the office - not a normal occurrence at this time in the evening. However, I no longer have a functional PC at home, and though I expect to recover functionality eventually I've no idea how long it will take.
My PC has been slow for some time, and although it picked up somewhat after I removed the hard disk from my old PC which![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
foradan had kindly helped me move across, it never really returned to its old self. It's had trouble loading Windows XP, and on Saturday morning stalled at start-up. The helpline adviser suggested that I disable the floppy drive, and this seemed to help, but the PC failed to start again that afternoon and after a few expedients failed, I was recommended to reformat the hard drive completely. Saturday evening saw the PC in safe mode as I copied all the files I needed across, especially my e-mails, which took ages - 'Exporting SocT, Time remaining: 8 hours', the screen said at one point. I wanted to undertake the task all in one go as I felt turning the PC off was too great a risk.
I left the PC on all night, but it crashed on Sunday morning - and then restarted very easily in full Windows XP mode as if nothing was wrong. In the afternoon, though, it failed to load Windows again, and I duly inserted the System Recovery disk and began preparations to reformat the hard drive.
My PC, bless it, refused to be reformatted.
So, on to the helpline again. They recommended that I go to PC World (where I'd acquired my PC off the shelf last December after much dithering) and ask them to download a Windows 98 startup disk. This would include Scandisk (not included as standard with Windows XP) and this would be able to identify and possibly deal with any corrupt clusters. If this doesn't work, then it's goodbye to my hard disk after nine months of faithful service - my last one, despite a reformatting when about a year and a half old, served me well for seven years.
I'm not heading home yet - I have some reading forpennypaperbrain to do.
My PC has been slow for some time, and although it picked up somewhat after I removed the hard disk from my old PC which
foradan had kindly helped me move across, it never really returned to its old self. It's had trouble loading Windows XP, and on Saturday morning stalled at start-up. The helpline adviser suggested that I disable the floppy drive, and this seemed to help, but the PC failed to start again that afternoon and after a few expedients failed, I was recommended to reformat the hard drive completely. Saturday evening saw the PC in safe mode as I copied all the files I needed across, especially my e-mails, which took ages - 'Exporting SocT, Time remaining: 8 hours', the screen said at one point. I wanted to undertake the task all in one go as I felt turning the PC off was too great a risk.I left the PC on all night, but it crashed on Sunday morning - and then restarted very easily in full Windows XP mode as if nothing was wrong. In the afternoon, though, it failed to load Windows again, and I duly inserted the System Recovery disk and began preparations to reformat the hard drive.
My PC, bless it, refused to be reformatted.
So, on to the helpline again. They recommended that I go to PC World (where I'd acquired my PC off the shelf last December after much dithering) and ask them to download a Windows 98 startup disk. This would include Scandisk (not included as standard with Windows XP) and this would be able to identify and possibly deal with any corrupt clusters. If this doesn't work, then it's goodbye to my hard disk after nine months of faithful service - my last one, despite a reformatting when about a year and a half old, served me well for seven years.
I'm not heading home yet - I have some reading for
pennypaperbrain to do.