I bet you’re wondering, “Now, why don’t he write?”.
Well…
It all started with a gift that arrived via UPS yesterday morning. Vinny, my co-hort in crime, was very generous in sending me an early Christmas present. He sent me a Samson C01U USB Studio Condenser Microphone, along with a desk stand.
I was so excited to get it. It’s the perfect gift for a geek like me who loves to talk. Haha.
I spent the morning trying to get it working under Ubuntu, to no avail. I could get Audacity to recognize it, but not use it. I just couldn’t get it to work under Ubuntu.
Somewhere along the line yesterday, I decided I would separate “home” from “work”. Using the old desktop as a server, I would use the work laptop for, umm, work, and I would use the old HP laptop I have for personal “schtuff”.
As I began the fresh install of Ubuntu on the old laptop, I also began backing up documents, projects and other pertinent data to my thumb drive, so I could move everything to the XP side of the work laptop.
I copied my Thunderbird mail files from the Ubuntu side to the Windows XP side. I exported my bookmarks from Firefox, and then I re-partioned the Linux partitions.
I finished setting up Thunderbird the way I like it and I made sure all of my favorite extensions were present and accounted for in Firefox. A quick check for Windows Updates, and I rebooted the machine.
That’s when all hell broke loose.
As the work laptop came back up, it produced a grub error. Crap. I forgot about grub. Dagnabbit.
After researching how to overcome this grub error, I inserted my Windows XP cd, booted into the Recovery Console, and fixed the master boot record. For those of you wondering, its the “fixmbr” command.
Upon reboot, the machine came up just fine, and I did a quick check of email. I opened Firefox and began browsing. Sometime, about 4 minutes in, it hit. The BSOD (blue screen of death). Honestly, until last night, I had never seen one in Windows XP.
As soon as the BSOD appeared, the machine rebooted itself. It came back up “normal” and about four minutes in, the same thing happened. BAM. Another BSOD. Only this time, when it rebooted (which I had no control over again), it immediately produced another BSOD, and rebooted. It did this over, and over, and over, and over, and… well, you get the idea.
I inserted the Windows XP CD again, and attempted a Setup Repair. Only to find that the BSOD hits again just after the final reboot. And again… And again… And again…
So, at 1:30am, I began the official first re-install of Windows on this laptop.
After a day of making sure I have everything running (I still have a boatload of backup cd’s to go through), here I am.
And that is where I was, and why I didn’t write. It’s not like I got ambushed by indians or anything.
Sphere: Related Content
