The saga of the PC continues.

To those of you who aren’t technically minded, think of my old PC as being an oil tanker.

My tanker went on the rocks, the hull was damaged and the engines were completely smashed.

Is it now a useless tanker?

No.  Because the oil is still on board.  But the engines are smashed so there is no power to pump the oil off.

What I needed was another ship that could sail up to the taker and using its power, pump the oil off.   So I spent the last few days scouring the Internet for software that I could mount onto a CD or DVD that could access my one remaining hard disk.

I found the software/ship that I needed, and my files/oil is at this moment being pumped into a USB hard disk/storage tank.

70,000,000,000 gallons of oil!  [or as we say in the ‘puter business – 70Gb of data]

Once the oil is off, I can go about repairing the holes in the hull [repartitioning the faulty hard drive] and installing new engines [new Windows].

Hopefully I’ll end up with an oil tanker in pristine condition.

I didn’t like to admit it before, even to myself, but some of the information on that computer was critical.  For some reason, the latest backup had failed, and I hadn’t been aware of the fact until this week.  There were a load of personal files [like our French holiday photographs] but there were also critical business files, such as the originals of all my graphics work.

I haven’t been able to do a tap of work since the failure, and am having a difficult time with a couple of demanding clients.  Hopefully, by tomorrow I’ll be able to get back in the saddle and do some of the backlog.

Life would be so much simpler if I could only retire.

Some of you may have seen from the other site that I have been having some wee PC problems?

My trusty old laptop crashed with a complete hard disk failure.  Bad sectors and tracks everywhere.

Fortunately, it is a duel disk machine and all my data [and Grandad’s] is on the other disk.  However, I can’t get at it!

The only thing I can do is to reformat the faulty disk and re-install the operating system.  However, the laptop came with no disks, so I have the licence, but nothing to install from.  In an ideal world, Microsoft would just send me a new disk, seeing as I have already paid for the damned thing, but no – we are talking Microsoft here, and they will send a new disc, provided I buy it along with a new licence. 

I bought a new laptop.  It may sound a bit drastic and expensive, but Grandad’s site will pay for it, and seeing as he is the likely cause of the crash in the first place, it is only fair.

Then of course I had the problem of reinstalling all the software.  That may sound simple, but each piece of software has its own settings.  For example, my FTP software was configured to log into about 60 servers, each with its own settings and passwords.  Luckily I had backups of the really critical settings for that, so I was able to restore it more or less intact.  The same goes for my bookmarks and the like.

So far, all I have really lost that is important is my photograph collection, a load of sound files and a mountain of personal stuff.  All Grandad’s mail is gone, but by business stuff is backed up onto another machine, thank God.  If ever I lay my hands on a Vista DVD, then I can retrieve all the lost stuff anyway.

They tell us [whoever they are] that we should backup often.  What they don’t tell us is that even with a backup, that reviving a machine, or building a new one is a complete nightmare.

Anyone got a spare copy of Windows Vista?

The wren, the wren, the king of all birds,
On St. Stephen’s Day was caught in the furze,
Although he is little, his family is great,
I pray you, good landlord, give us a treat.

My box would speak, if it had but a tongue,
And two or three shillings, would do it not wrong,
Sing holly, sing ivy–sing ivy, sing holly,
A drop just to drink, it would drown melancholy.

And if you draw it of the best,
I hope in heaven your soul will rest;
But if you draw it of the small,
It won’t agree with these wren boys at all.

So goes the song of the Wran [Wren] Boys.

The Wran Boys tour the neighbourhood on St Stephen’s Day in Ireland, bearing the body of a wren and bringing luck. It is a tradition as old as the mountains themselves.

The wren represents the old year and must be killed to make way for the new. Nowadays, of course the sacrifice is symbolic but the music, the costume and the singing remain the same.

They called around today.