This seems to be an annual tradition anymore...

My Windows installation's crashed. Again.

It started this past weekend. It just started randomly freezing. Sometimes it would reboot after a bit, so I'd go to sleep leaving Windows on and wake up to Linux the next morning. So far Linux seems to be OK. Fucking Windows.

Anyway, I tried fixing it. I found that my case intake fan died, so I replaced it. That didn't help. I thought it was a driver problem, so I uninstalled and reinstalled some things that looked suspicious. No dice. Tried System Restore. Nope. So now I'm completely stumped. I can't boot it in Safe Mode, and I can't do a repair install using the Windows XP install disk since the disk doesn't recognize the partition anymore (though I can get to the files through Linux). So I'm stuck on my Linux partition, and I've started pulling files off so I can reformat. But I've got two projects coming up. So it'll have to wait a bit.

This irritates me to no end. There was nothing wrong with the system on Friday. Now it can't go 5 minutes without locking up. For no reason whatsoever. It's frustrating when you're a guy paid to fix people's computers and you can't fix your own. I get in a bad place when I'm powerless to do something, and I was there tonight, since in my attempts to get Windows working again, it wrote over my MBR so I only had access to Windows. I was frantic, burning disks (thanks, robertliguori) and trying to find a way to get the bootloader working again. I didn't even know how to do it with Ubuntu! I finally figured it out, and got everything straightened out. But I was in dead panic, and afterwards, I felt like an idiot.

Anyway, the crisis is over for the moment. And once I get my schoolwork squared away, I can back up my disk and wipe the slate clean for another install. Maybe I'll put Windows Server 2003 on it this time; supposedly, it's more stable. Ha.