Cough

Here's the plan:
1) Format the disks, then Reinstall Windows 2000, with Service Pack 4, Internet Explorer 6, and the various bugfixes currently available from (spit) Microsoft. Then use NovaBackup to make a snapshot of a completely clean basic Windows installation.

2) Install all the drivers and software that I use, and take a second snapshop.

3) If the system goes the way of the pear again, take the system and program partitions back to the second backup - to a time when they were working but not pear shaped.

4) If there's a serious problem, go back to the basic installation.

If I had any sense, I'd have done this a year or more ago. Speaking of which, I'm listening on my N-Pod to a recording of The Breezeblock from the fourth of January, 2004. I've been recording radio shows since the beginning of last year, but it's taken me this long to get around to getting a portable device to play them back.

2 comments:

  1. You seem to spend an awful lot of time installing and re-installing computer software.
    Here's a plan. Invent a nifty bit of software, and/or gadget that no one has heard of, patent it, become rich and then employ someone to maintain your computers for you! Simple... Not that it's worked for me yet.
    PS Splutter.

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  2. Reinstalling. Ah, you noticed that too :-). Well, after an evening spent installing windows on my own computer, I spent the night fixing (actually, failing to fix) someone else's printer. Tomorrow there's a soldier with a server and a website that's gone down, and on thursday there's an actor with an *old* PC that keeps crashing, and his lodger who can't connect his laptop to the internet.

    Oh, and there's a sailor with a virus, probably on friday. So to speak.

    Exactly how I get to know all these sailors, soldiers and actors is a question. But...um...yes.

    Cunning plan. Hmmm. If I invent a way to stop windows crashing, Microsoft will sue me. If I invent a super-duper software synthesiser...Reaktor and Reason will make one better, because they've got teams of experts.

    Tyler of The Cow Exchange and me were working on a searchable rhyming dictionary that allows for several different kinds of rhymes. But he's gone quiet.

    I did have a musical idea: The Remix Generator. You feed in a selection of drum loops, basslines, vocal tracks and stuff...and it generates a partially random arrangement *in*the*genre*of*your*choice!

    You've got a pop ballad and you need a trance mix? Easy! Just feed in the sections for each instrument, and the program will shuffle them into a formulaic trance format. Complete with throbby bassline and a bit near the end where the drums drop and you get lots of pads.

    PS. when I have a cold, I can do a Kenny Rogers impersonation. Kenny Rogers with adenoidal trouble. When it's a bad cold, I can do Barry White. Still, at least it's not Cyndi Lauper.

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