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timshel.

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"Everything counts a little more than we think..."

03 December 2004 Friday

The Stupid Computer

slated in moments, molehills at 5:09 am

(formerly affectionately known as “BBB” / “Baby Blue Bytes”)

affectionately nothing right now.

unfortunately about my computer, it’s looking like i have two options:

a) drive about an hour tomorrow to take my computer to an authorized toshiba service center where their minimum charge is $75 for a diagnostic check… and their paper thing says they’ll charge me for backing up/retrieving any data: to the approximate cost of $200 for 4.71 gb of data, saved to DVD. which is a total bunch of crap. if i’m going there, i’m bringing Casey, my 200 GB external USB harddrive, and once they’ve ‘gained access’ to the files, i’ll move those things myself. good gracious.

b) just let the original setup CD (three of them) do their thing = completely wipe, delete, destroy, eliminate, erase, obliterate, force into oblivion, annihilate all my currnet programs, files, settings, thoughts, life.. and install a ‘fresh’ copy of windows. with all the typical startup toshiba garbage included.

personally, neither of those options are making me think very well of the world at the moment.

Comments on The Stupid Computer

  1. c) Go buy a new hard drive. Do option *b* to it (making sure you unplug the old hard drive first. Once the new drive is up and happy, then reconnect the old drive and copy everything over (if the old drive is not completely shot).
    commented Sat 04 Dec 2004, 2:11:43 AM :: link
  2. that’s actually really good advice. how do i connect an internal harddrive to a laptop that already has a running internal harddrive, though? i’d need a special cable or something, yes?

    as it’s turned out, i’ve gone ahead and decided that it was worth $100 for them to give me my ~47 GB of files on CD/DVDs.. and then after i wipe and newly format it, it *should* be all good.

    the recent suggestion to partition the drive and experiment with linux on one side of it is a tempting thought…

    you know what though? as far as the crashing goes… i have most safeguards to put up against crashes and problems… my computer hadn’t failed in a good while, despite the constant battering i guess it receives… just that when it crashes, it seems to crash really fast and really really hard. i dunno if an apple could have prevented this. i don’t even know that linux could have prevented this. now, if i knew how to maneuver on a backend and call up useful linux/dos-style commands and stuff, maybe i could’ve recovered this sooner/on my own. *hum*

    my mom insists this is my computer’s way of telling me that i shouldn’t take it with me on the month-long trip to Malaysia. ...this, she tells me, while she insists she’ll be bringing along hers “for internet banking!” ...hel-LO! where do you think i do my banking? and a good much of everything else. yea. i’ll be bringing _a_ computer with me, whether BBB pulls through (damn well better..i wasn’t wanting a new computer til near 3 years with this one.. and i b’lieve it came to me summer 2003) or not.
    commented Sat 04 Dec 2004, 2:38:39 AM :: link
  3. I didn’t know that it was a laptop. Although I guess it would have been a good guess since I’m not sure if Toshiba even makes desktops. Well…at least things are better.
    commented Sat 04 Dec 2004, 8:04:09 AM :: link
  4. Nah if the HD was going south, it wouldn’t have mattered what OS you were using.

    I suppose there’s a small chance you might have noticed with some sort of regular filesystem check, but honestly I don’t do that myself. It only checks on boot to see if it was closed properly and recover journaled data.

    I don’t know if NTFS is journaled. Interesting thought.

    Anyhow, rambling along. I only suggested Linux since you’d expressed an interest in it and if you’ve got a shiny blank HD, that’s the easiest time to put it on there. Okay, well on to catch up with other posts :). (The RSS feed is so nice.)
    commented Sat 04 Dec 2004, 7:49:39 PM :: link
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