Don't you just hate it when....

Mundane Pointless Stuff I Must Share (MPSIMS)
1

WARNING, ranting to follow!!!

Ok, I come back from spring break and what does my roommate tell me? He had an ‘emergency’ where he had to use my computer. Somehow, it locks up, and in the process of using the ‘three-fingered salute’ on the Ctrl-Alt-Delete keys, my nice Compaq Presario 2266 deleted it’s most important file, the Sys.ini file. Yes, my roommate crashed my computer! And, unfortunately, Compaq does not furnish its buyers with any Windows software, but only a restore CD. So, after TOTALLY restoring my computer to original factory specs, then spending hours getting my downloads back, an installation of Office2000 didn’t go as planned, and I can’t uninstall or delete it!

Yes, I had to do ANOTHER total restore of my machine and start all over AGAIN. Now, I thought all was going to be hunky-dory. I checked my e-mail, using Outlook Express to fetch my mail from my school’s server. Evidently, an e-mail that my parents tried to send me (with some sort of funky scanned document attachment) locked up my e-mail account to where it would stop loading e-mails at that particular one. It would only let me read numbers 1-14. E-mail #15 was the one with the attachment.

Three days, and much frustration later, I had the computer gurus on campus just wipe out my e-mail account and start all over with a new one, with the same login name, of course.

So, not only did I lose EVERYTHING on my computer (all my papers and such for school, e-mail addresses, about 70 LEGAL MP3s, countless ‘make your computer run better and have fun’ downloads, some very special publisher pictures that I printed off as Christmas presents, and about a hundred e-mails; including those ‘aaaawww…how cute’ messages from my lady friends), but I also lost about 250 saved messages on my school e-mail account that I was saving there because nothing EVER goes wrong with those…

I hate when that happens.

I hope my sig line is still functioning. It’s all I have left…snif snif…

“If we submit everything to reason, our religion will have no mysterious or supernatural element. If we offend the principles of reason, our religion will be absurd and ridiculous.” Blaise Pascal

2

bummer! I think that would be legitimate grounds for murder.

I really try to be good but it just isn’t in my nature!

3

That sucks and all, but (someone has to say it)
That’s what you get for buying a Compaq!

“Winners never quit and quitters never win, but those who never win and never quit are idiots.”

4

:::snickering at Lexicon:::

Do yourself a favor?

After you get everything installed again, run out and buy System Commander by V Communications, Inc. and install a nice, complex password for the boot process.

It works well and, if you disable alternate boot sources, not much will happen when your back is turned–unless they drop it out a window or something.

–Kalél
TheHungerSite.com

“Well, there was that thing with the Cheese-Wiz…but I’m feeling much better now!” – John Astin, Night Court
“If ignorance is bliss, you must be orgasmic.”

5

Well, there may be a bit of a silver lining for you. Call compaq and tell them that you want a real windows cd. Guess what, it’s part of the OEM agreement that they sign with microsoft, that they must provide you with one if you ask for it. Either they will send you one for free, or they may charge your for shipping and handling. Also, are you running win95 or win98? If you are running win98, make a boot disk (go to add/remove programs in the control panel, and the startup disk tab in that, clik the button to create disk) and put that disk in a safe place. Then, when your computer crashes, put that floppy disk and your windows 98 cd in, restart the computer. Select the option “Start computer with cd rom support” and press enter when it prompts you. It will give you an a:\ prompt (we’re dealing with dos here). Type “d:” (minus the quotes of course) and press enter to switch to your cd rom drive. Then type “setup /nd /p f” and press enter. That will force windows to reinstall cleanly, and you won’t lose any files. :slight_smile:

P.S. If it tells you that you don’t have enough disk space, type “setup /nd /p f /id”

God WAS my co-pilot, but we crashed in the mountains and i had to eat him.

6

Things to learn from this:

  1. Get a Zip drive and back everything up regularly.

  2. Get your Windows CD from Compaq.

  3. Get a security program that locks out your roommate.

  4. If necessary, take your keyboard with you when you go away.

I am sympathetic, though. Your roommate should be dangled out a window until he promised to do all the cleaning for a semester or something.