Just like in films, each installment is crappier than the last
So, having lost a ton of video files and recovered my corrupted user/logon profile, last Thursday (at the beginning of a long weekend to use up my final two days of holiday time from work), my laptop greeted me with the infamous Blue Screen of Death (BSOD — it even gets its own acronym) and firmly refused to boot up, not even in safe mode.
Cue much gnashing of teeth and rending of garments.
This was unacceptable — I haven’t been without a home computer since 1999.
I used my smartphone to Google the ominous “fatal system error” code and found the advice was along the lines of ‘your hard drive may have been killed by a Microsoft update and even if it isn’t completely dead you’ll need to reinstall Windows.’ Crap. However, after considering walking into the Apple Store and making a salesperson’s day, on further searching, I learned that Recovery Console is your friend in situations like this. The problem being that my Dell is one of those shipped with a separate partition containing an image of the original factory settings, meaning it came without an XP disc. And because I couldn’t even get into Safe Mode I couldn’t run System Restore.
I considered just starting again with the full reset, because clearly my system has issues, but the idea that I could recover all my programs and settings was too enticing. So on Wednesday I borrowed a disc from work, ran Check Disk from Recovery Console, and rebooted, problem solved (for now, I’m guessing). I uninstalled a few things, ran a long overdue defrag, and here I am.
Over the weekend, I had pulled out my old Windows 98 IBM, which seemed a bit confused about being dusted off and switched on at first but managed to start up fine. I’d momentarily forgotten because it’s so old it doesn’t even have an Ethernet port, and with no wireless card either there was no way for it to connect to the Internet.
But while I was looking through old documents I’ve never gotten around to transferring, I came across the hilarious Windows haiku that did the rounds years ago, which made me laugh and relieved my stress levels. Here are my favourites:
Yesterday it worked
Today it is not working
Windows is like that.
A file that big?
It might be very useful.
But now it is gone.
Chaos reigns within.
Reflect, repent, and reboot.
Order shall return.
Windows NT crashed.
I am the Blue Screen of Death.
No one hears your screams.
Stay the patient course
Of little worth is your ire
The network is down.
A crash reduces
your expensive computer
to a simple stone.
The Web site you seek
cannot be located but
endless others exist.
First snow, then silence.
This thousand dollar screen dies
so beautifully.
With searching comes loss
and the presence of absence:
“My Novel” not found.
Having been erased,
The document you’re seeking
Must now be retyped.
Aborted effort:
Close all that you have.
You ask way too much.
Three things are certain:
Death, taxes, and lost data.
Guess which has occurred.
The full list is here, in the depths of the Salon.com archives.
