OH, CRAP.

OH, CRAP.

CRAP, I SAY.

My laptop was just hit by The Blue Screen of Death.

Now when I turn it on, it gets to the point where you choose operating system (I've got Windows XP installed three times but only one of these actually works). I choose the one that works and then... nothing.

I have that Windows recovery disk or something... I think I'll give it a shot, see if I can install them over without losing my files. (That's what I get for not backing up. Stupid, stupid me.) Thankfully, most of my WIPs are in the flash-disk I took with me at Salonica, but I'd still lose some WIPs plus the biggest part of my music collection.

Cath, sorry for the sudden disappearance. Would love to continue the chat here, but MSN Messenger isn't installed on this computer and I couldn't possibly focus on installing it right now.

Any help will be greatly appreciated. I'll be between computers for now, trying stuff until I drop dead from exhaustion and doing my best not to start cursing in a very, very loud voice.

See ya,
Anna.

OH, CRAP. (Part the second.) -- Now updated!

CRAP.

I can't believe it.

Whatever was wrong, was apparently in my flash-disk. Because athanamia's got the same problem.

CRAP.

I feel so guilty.

I scanned the flash-disk with the antivirus we've got on this computer (NOD32) but it says it's clean. And frankly, I don't understand why it wouldn't be. All I've put in it is my folder of downloads for The Sims 2, Word files of my WIPs and a couple of .exe files. I'd blame it to eMule, but I'd been using it for a couple of weeks at least, while athanamia's computer got the problem only a couple of days after we installed it.

And I've previously used the flash-disk to transfer files to this computer and this one is still working, so I don't think it was problematic to start with.

Still.

Update! I just talked to athanamia and, apparently, her computer has another kind of problem, much milder. Phew.

I ran a chkdsk on the laptop. It was taking a few centuries to proceed, and eventually stopped at 50% with the message: "Critical error found." (Why, THANK YOU, you're so helpful.) Then I tried to give it another shot. Surprise, surprise, it got all the way to the Windows loading screen - and then promptly rebooted itself. I got the message "We're sorry, but Windows could not load properly. This may be due to... (blah blah blah)" From there, I chose to boot with the last known correct settings.

Ater that, I don't know how many times it got to the Windows loading screen and then rebooted, until I got sick of it and turned it off.

I didn't take off the battery and then put it back on, because it's not easy to do that with my laptop - it takes unscrewing and stuff. I did unplug it and left it alone all day, though, which may account for its decision to act a tad more decently today. Operating in safe mode or the other versions of Windows didn't work yesterday - but I'll give it a shot later tonight, too.

I tried that recovery CD, but I couldn't get the restoration tool to work, and it can't install Windows without formatting the hard drive. (Perhaps for luck of free space? It had worked in the past.)

...We'll see. We may call the technician, but I'd like to fix it myself if I can, because I had files I wanted all around the compy and last time, when this computer here had a problem, the technician only saved the files in My Documents, thus losing us a good amount of files.

Sigh.

Will see you around.

Anna.