Close... Too Close

[filkertom]

I've been having more and more problems with my main external hard drive lately. Today, it took about ten minutes for my computer to recognize it. So I hied off to Best Buy, which has a Seagate 500 GB external drive on sale for $119.99, and I'm copying like crazy. There have been a few hosed and corrupted files, but nothing at all vital. I've got almost everything on DVD anyway, but I'll probably make extra copies just in case.

I also have to do a full hard drive wipe and reinstall on a Gateway laptop I got for a song (almost literally). It's all Vista 'n' stuff, and I'm going to make it an XP machine.

Any tech woes or triumphs on your end?

ETA: Oh crap. I think a lot of stuff might be hosed, on multiple machines. Not related, just all at the same time. It's gonna be a long night.

Comments

Getting ready to whimper

[cyranetta.livejournal.com]

I recently got a laptop (fortunately, I was able to order it with XP) and am about to enter the twisted forest of trying to get it to talk to the wireless router and get to the internet. It's like entering a maelstrom -- uninstalling Norton AV and installing another AV, trying to figure out just which sequence of activities and configurations need to occur in what sequence with enough variables in software and hardware that I'm sure there's no help to be had from any help desk (envisioning a large-scale finger-pointing circle).