Mood:

I’ve been offline since Sunday. I got a new 200 GB drive and decided to install my recently-bought version of Windows XP Pro fresh on it, and pass my extra 40 GB drive on to my wife for the same treatment with a new XP Home installation. What followed was several days of hell as both computers kept blue-screening after the main installation screens were about to come up.

It wasn’t hardware-related. After attempts to bypass the problems via boot discs were thwarted with other weird errors, I finally just made a copy of the original install CDs and it all just worked as it was supposed to.

I don’t know if it was just that the hologrammed discs just weren’t compatible with my drive or what, but goddamnit I was pissed off and ready to chew nails. Both computers are now up and running properly.

Mental note for next time: disconnect the original drive that’s going to become the secondary before installing Windows or the new boot drive will not be drive C:. I should have remembered that from last time, but it was a couple years ago; WinXP, you have spoiled me!

Another rant: the Automatic Updates kick in and download stuff, then when they’re loaded they want to reboot my computer. Later, I said, as I was copying all my MP3s and myriad other files from my old drive to my new one. It estimated over two hours so I left it and went to bed. In the morning Windows happily informed me that it had rebooted because of updates. I checked — sure enough, it rebooted before the file copy function had completed. I don’t know who the fuck decided to build an automatic reboot into the automatic updates, but I’d like to kick him in the nuts a few times. I’ve since changed the setting to auto-download but don’t install until I say so.

In other news, I found that people from work are reading my blog so now I have to second-guess anything I might post about myself. I don’t know what would make them think me so interesting; I guess I’m an enigma…