Arrant Nonsense

And it kept cutting out on me. I knew it had to be my computer, because the Hubby!Puter worked just fine, thank you.

It finally stayed connected long enough for me to download an updated driver for my wireless card, and, lo, I am in. For good, it appears.

Now I'm in the process of backing all my shit up, which I (shamefully) haven't done since January.

Then I'm going to decide whether I'm going to nuke this thing from orbit or not and just start with a clean install. Because, seriously. I know it will be a huge pain in the ass, but this is really NOT COOL. At all.

Perhaps, sometime, I shall get some more writing done.

Maybe I could get on the internet if I installed the driver for the wireless card. Which I am now in the process of yoinking off Averatec's website onto a thumb drive. And, perhaps, I should download all the drivers I need and put them on a handy CD so I'll have it when this happens again--as it inevitably will.

Sometimes I'm as dense as a neutron star, I swear.

Sorry for spamming your flist, guys. It will all be over soon, one way or the other. Either I'll get the thing working properly or I'll smash it against a wall.

EDIT: I HAZ INTERWEBS. Switching over NAOW.

I've got my screensaver working properly (I think). At least, I have new wallpaper that is not embarrassing and that doesn't suck, loaded from Webshots, so...yeah. That's a good.

I still have no internet connection, though, and the little icon in my taskbar that used to tell me if I had networks in range is missing. I have no idea how to get it back. When I go into my Program Files, my stuff is there, but it's not showing up when I click "Start--All Programs."

So much hate for this right now. So. Very. Much.

Okay, and that's weird. For my startup, I've got two different XP...things to select from. Apparently, I have the new one that I've been wrestling with today, and the old one with the corrupted registry. Which is still corrupted. Color me surprised, she deadpanned.

Yeah, I don't even know. Paint Shop Pro is right there. Webshots (my screensaver) is there but none of the collections I had in it are in it (I have them, they're just not in the program). I have Firefox. So maybe I don't need to install all this stuff from scratch like I thought I might.

But I'm going to be all day straightening this out, I know I am.

Oh, and the guy who was supposed to be here at nine to drop off the headers and pick up his check? Isn't here--and I have to go, because I have a doctor's appointment, and with my computer being kaput, I couldn't print off the forms.

CRAPDOODLES.

I hope I haven't completely hosed myself. I appear to be doing a Windows install on my little netbook. I told it to leave the file system intact. We'll see what happens, I guess. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. I wonder if I should take a class so that I actually know what the hell I'm doing next time something like this happens (as it inevitably will, computers being what they are).

I really, really need something that will do automatic backups for me. You'd think I'd have learned my lesson by now.

I guess I'll find out in half an hour or so. Wish me luck.

I really don't need to be doing this while running on three hours of sleep, waiting for a guy to show up with the Hubby headers, and waiting to go to a doctor's appointment.

And now it's telling me my product key is invalid. Edit: That was a "B," not an "8." I hate my eyes.

I'm going to go kill something now. Maybe not yet.

I have an XP disc that Geek Box burned for me.

And it won't bring up the recovery console. It just wants to load XP. That's not what I want it to do, at all, because that will entail me losing my data, and that would suck like a big sucking thing. I don't remember it doing this last time...

I have writing to do, dammit. *bangs head on keyboard*

I may have to make another phone call.

My poor little puter has blue-screened at me again. Fortunately, I know how to fix it this time. Unfortunately, I still don't own a WinXP disk so I can access a recovery console. The guy that loaned me the disk before is out of town until the 28th. I've emailed my Writing Buddy to see if he's got one lying around. My next step is to call Geek Box and see if they'll do anything for me.

And, of course, I just happen to have the Most Embarrassing Wallpaper ever up (don't ask, seriously, what the hell was I thinking, OF COURSE something like this happens and as soon as I fix it I am so deleting that) so I really don't want someone else messing with it.

Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaah. At least the Hubby puter is home right now, so if I can just find a WinXP disk, I'm golden.

So, I left my computer running (as I do) and went to make dinner on Friday. When I came back, I had a black screen, and it wouldn't boot. AUGH. Naturally, this is a netbook with no built-in CD drive (I have an external drive), and thus the OS came in a partition--which was lost when I replaced the hard drive during the Great Crash.

Fortunately, I've got a friend with an XP CD, and he graciously loaned it to me Saturday afternoon so I could attempt to run the restore thingy. I finally got the thing to throw up a blue screen error code for long enough for me to actually write down what it was. Of course, the Hubby had to go to work on Saturday morning, taking the other computer with him for work-related stuff. But he came home this evening, Google is my very good friend, and I'm back up and running with (apparently) no data loss. *wipes brow*

How was your weekend?

My computer is back up and running smoothly.

Well. Mostly. For some reason, it doesn't like the wireless printer settings (or they don't like it). Something to do with the firewall? I have no idea how to go in and actually fix that. I'm using Avast, if anyone has any clues on that.

And I still can't find my Word CD. If I have to buy a new one, I'm going to be Very Put Out. I know I saw the thing, and not that long ago, too. I've torn the house apart, looking for it. Not enough, apparently. Dammit.

And everything's there. The new Ben&Janni novel is intact. *breathes giant sigh of relief*

Now, I just have to reload all my programs:
Avast antivirus
Webshots (Oh, hai, Robert, golly I missed you)
VLC media player (slowest download EVER OMG--I finally gave up and found a different mirror, because, dude)
OpenOffice
Word
Spybot
PaintShopPro
Firefox (and the add-ons OMG) AND I have my bookmarks back!
LJArchive
YIM
Gmail Notify
the SD Drive driver (probably)
WinRAR
the printer (and won't that be fun, why, yes, yes it was)

Why, yes, I'm going to be doing this ALL DAY. Why do you ask?

Most of these things are downloads. I'm not sure if that makes it easier or harder. And I still haven't found my Word CD.