I pit Palm, my computer dealer, and my own rotten luck

The BBQ Pit
1

We haven’t been having a very good time with our computers recently at the Fagtorium.

Dear old Beulah was on the way to giving up the ghost, so I got a new computer. I had them take the hard drive out of Beulah and load it into the new one.

They installed the old hard drive as C: and the new one (which I had bought a few months previously, but which Beulah did not accept) as F:, even though it was the boot drive.

By and by, C: crashed … right in the middle of the election … and gradually rendered the entire computer inoperable. I took it in, and they disconnected it. Fortunately I had already moved my documents to F:.

However, some programs did not approve of this. I had tried to install the desktop software for my Palm onto F:, but it didn’t work. It insisted on being in C: and since C: was no longer present, there was nothing doing.

I emailed Palm for help with this. Their instructions allowed me to install the Palm desktop program. It did not, however, allow me to HotSync my Palm.

I emailed them back. I was in the middle of following their instructions (involving the *subst c: f:* command to make my f: drive look like my c: drive) when the computer abruptly crashed.

And didn’t wake up.

When I rebooted, Windows tried repeatedly to start. But each time it arrived at the safe mode screen, whatever I chose, it rebooted. And when I tried to reinstall Windows… it said I had no hard drives at all.

Now my computer is in the shop.

To put the icing on the cake, last night I had to change the batteries on my Palm, something I’ve done several times before. But this time, I must have taken just a little too long, because all of my data – my address book, my agenda, all my course notes from the last term, and my notes from the election – went bye-bye.

With no backup.

Since the Palm desktop software hasn’t been working since my first hard drive crashed.

And since my attempts to get it working again crashed the other one.

takes a deep breath

*FUCK!! *

Thank you.

(Oh, and if I have your address, I don’t anymore. Please send it to matt_mcl@hotmail.com .)

2

Forgot to say:

I’m pitting Palm for making a piece of software that can’t deal with any drive other than C: and that can crash my hard drive.

I’m pitting my computer store for having set up the drives with that fucked-up lettering anyways.

Just for good measure, I’m pitting Windows for not letting me reassign drive letters the way I want them, and for crashing at the drop of a hat.

And I’m pitting my own rotten luck for just that one second too long at changing the fucking batteries.

I think that should do it.

stomps off in a snit

3

I recently had the same battery issue happen with my Palm VIIx. I lost 2 years of accumulated data that I had last backed up three months ago. My condolences for the loss.

4

I’m not too much of a technician, but it sounds like the root of the problem here is the computer shop installing a drive as C that had traces of a previous Windows installation on it. They should have used the newer (presumably empty) one, and all would have been fine, I think. So your gripe is with the computer shop, not Palm. Incidentally, try and switch the two drives: you only need to switch the cables and the slave/master settings. Then reinstall Windows on the new C (which is now F). Chances are the PC will work just fine. The old hard drive might still be fucked, though.

5

You can change the drive letter of your drive if you’re ever able to get back into Windows.

Windows 2000/XP:
Hit Start > Run > Type in diskmgmt.msc > Hit OK
In the upper list of drives, right-click the drive whose letter you wish to change and select “Change Drive Letter and Paths”

Windows 95/98/Me:
Had to look it up
http://www.annoyances.org/exec/show/article02-024

Keep in mind that to change “F” to “C” you’ll have to change “C” to something different first. You also might have problems with already-installed software now failing to work as it looks in the wrong place for files. (i.e. what was once at F:\Blah\ is now at C:\Blah.) Start Menu shortcuts may be broken but this is trivial to fix.

Of course, I disavow any responsibility if this messes up your computer worse than before. The entire “drive letter” paradigm is really stupid anyway. Not that any other system is any better. (/dev/hda/ is just as inscrutable and meaningless as C:\ I guess.) I hope you are able to get things fixed up.

6

Actually, Windows (2K/XP at least, never tried it on 9x) gets really, really pissed off if its system drive letter (C:, or in this case, F:) changes. Any other letter is fine to be screwed with, but not Windows’ home drive. Supposedly, there’s a way to do with without a complete format-‘n’-reinstall, but I’ve never had it work.

7

Computer’s back and put right. Thank gods for my warranty/service plan.

There used to be a function wherein you could set a certain amount of space on one hard drive aside under a different drive letter. Can you still do that under Windows XP? Is it safe?

8

Yeah, that’s called making “partitions”. Not entirely sure how it’s done, but my XP-box has its C drive split into a C and D section. So it can be done, and I’m sure it’s quite harmless. Perhaps a Help search on “partitioning” will render some insight?

9

You can only set up or alter partitions on an empty drive, before installing Windows (in fact before formatting), unless you get a third-party partition manager program - I’ve heard good things said of Partition Magic, but I’ve never has cause to use it.

10

You can also use “subst” to make a folder on one drive appear to logically be a different drive entirely. We used to do this at my old job… everyone on the team would make a folder on some local drive which they would subst to be R:. Thus, all of our tools could be written knowing that they would be running from a fixed drive letter (R:).

(This probably doesn’t apply to your situation here, however.)

11

What the flip’s going on … ? I managed to trash all the data on my Palm just a couple of days ago. Is there some global Palm-disrupting agency on the loose? Has anyone checked the prophecies of Nostradamus to see if a global PDA plague was foretold? I think the truth should be known …

12

Does subst work permanently?

13

No. But you can put it in a batch file that will be run at startup time. How to do so depends on which version of Windows you’re running.