I am soooo pissed at myself now. Mr. “I’m pretty knowledgable about PCs” has screwed up his machine in a serious way (doping from work if you must know).
My idiocy was a two step process:
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I downloaded the latest security fix for IE5, and found out that it had a conflict with my Norton programs. To the tune of creating 30-40 thousand 0 byte “.inf” files. While deleting them I accidently deleted other important “*.inf” files. Things seemed to still be okay.
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I found out that there was a update for my video driver. I knew that I shouldn’ fuck with it. I knew I should’ve backed up. But noooooooo, I am a fucking idiot. Did I follow the vendors instructions? Of course not, instructions are for wimps. Well, now I boot to a black screen. My Norton rescue disks tell me that my display adapter is disabled, and it can’t find the generic files (see step 1).
Dell tech support had me do a dirty reinstall of ME, but no luck. SO now I’m at work trying to find DOS drivers for my ZIP so that I can copy files off my drive and do a clean wipe.
Note to self: Don’t fuck with it.
I don’t know about WinME, but when I screwed up Win98 really badly (and I’ve done so on more than one occassion), I could usually get away with simply deleting the Windows directory and re-installing Windows thereafter. You’d then have to re-install most of your software and re-install OS and driver updates, but that’s usually not a major problem. The only time I’ve ever done a re-format was when doing major hardware upgrades.
[John Astin]I’m feeling much better now.[/John Astin]
I’m still pissed at myself, but was able to salvage the important stuff off the HD (2+ months worth of pix of out little one). I slicked the drive (fdisk, format) and reinstalled. On the plus side, I got to get rid of a lot of the crap Dell loads at the factory. It looks like the only thing I lost was a handful of recipes for a reciped program I have. Oh well, no Iron Chef for me…
This is why I am terrified with messing with my PC. I just worry that too many things can go wrong - so I don’t update things the way I ought. Too scared. Too timid.
And yet, I am not a complete newbie. At least that’s the impression I get from some of my friends, who tell me that I know more than they do, or more than they expected I’d know.
But it’s just that I don’t want the headaches. Once you screw with a PC, it’s hard to undo it. I hear that Macs are better in this area, but I am not much better when it comes to my Mac. Scared to do much with it, either, I guess I’m “gun shy”. I should update to Mac OS 9.1, but I’m still on OS 8.6. I guess I figure, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. (Not that this is a bad idea, usually.)
Sorry for the tangent. Glad things are better now for you! Glad you got rid of a lot of the Dell crap. I have a custom-made PC right now, but I’ve heard of the proprietary crap some of these PC companies slap on the HDD. Annoying, it sounds. And a waste of HDD.
pcubed, I wouldn’t jump to blame to IE 5 fix. I would sooner look at WinME as the problem. I use Norton Utilities on my 98 setup, with the IE 5 security patches. No problems. However, everything seems to cause problems with ME, although I only run it on the stupid OEM Compaq version.
Can somebody please explain to me what the hell Norton Utilities are supposed to do?
Every single time I’ve run across those installed on a machine, they’ve caused innumerable headaches. I’ve banned them from all machines on my network.
Don’t install them. Don’t go near them, or First Aid, or Guard Dog, or anything that’s supposed to prevent crashes, and guess what? Your system won’t crash half as much.
In my experience, they are supposed to screw up your system if you try to update or change anything. I refuse to have any of that junk on my system anymore. For Christ’s sake stay away from First Aid, most worthless piece of crap I ever dealt with. No experience with Guard Dog, I’m guessing it’s some kind of firewall?
Norton Utilities or any program thats similar almost always causes problems. They go into places in your computer and mess with things that shouldn’t be messed with. I have found that Norton’s Anti-Virus is really good and fairly trustworthy not to fuck up your computer. I do know however that you should not put Mcaffee on your system. I have gotten so many calls about this program. Plus they charge for Virus updates…Norton’s does not. I would also be inclined to say that it was your update started the problem, ME runs smoothly for me, I’m always updateing, removeing, or changeing something. If it ever starts giving me the problems my 98 1rst ed. gave …I"m buying a mac.