Written from the kitchen table

[kinzel]

I'm writing this from the kitchen table, via Haysus the Asus, while the "big machine" in my office is going through a Windows nervous breakdown, telling me that, multiple times, that "we're sorry, Windows did not start normally" ....

This is not good news on account of I don't want to have to reinstall every single bit of software I have on that sucker in case there really is a problem ...if it doesn't route through to the desktop this time I'll move the box and push all the add-on cards, memory, and etc to make sure nothing urgent vibrated free during the overnight ...


UPDATED ...

the "return system to factory default" option seems open, but that's the pits ....
I have grabbed the most recent work on theo from the back-up drive, which is looking precious ......
sigh

Comments

Re: recovering xp

[kinzel.livejournal.com]

Richard -- thanks for the links.

The thing is, the box in question *does* have an OEM supplied OS with recovery info, so it has already been messed with. In keeping with the freelancer's lifestyle we bought the display model at Staples several years ago and didn't have time to reinstall, but the time I had time I had too much on there to mess with ...

Re: recovering xp

[(Anonymous)]

I had horrible feeling that this was the case. The symptoms you are getting are the same as I have had with hive file corruption but I am unsure what the effect of having an oem build is.

Microsoft seem to be worried you could find yourself without working admin passwords.

I suspect that despite microsofts warnings that you could get away without replacing security.sam.

I would however say that before going down this route you need to make sure you have back-ups of everything on the drive. Which could be easier said than done since that may require removeing the drive and hooking it up to another machine.

Richard