Flutterby™! : Other frustrations

Well, I owe Windows an apology. In the process of Forest lugging my XP box back and forth to the rat boys' house, something came loose inside it. Component isolation implicated the motherboard. So I went to CompUSA and, after struggling with a salesdude for a while, got a replacement motherboard. Of course that took different RAM and had a warning sticker saying "Warning: Use only 1.5v AGP 2.0", but after the CompUSA experience I wasn't about to go back there. So I went to Central Computer, where I got a video card I was sure was okay, and some new RAM, plugged it in, and Windows didn't boot. It started, but got midway through, crashed, and restarted.

My XP license was through an MSDN subscription to a startup venture that no longer exists, so after some back and forth there, I got a new XP Professional license, with great trepidation started setup, and... it had a repair option that worked. On the way I had various frustrations, but in the end I got my machine back up without having to spend a day and a half feeding it CDs and answering silly questions to reinstall all the software. Perhaps no easier than recovering from a similar problem with Linux, but in the end, with all the right disks, not much worse.

And, being a Waldorf kid (props to David Chess for "kids with chopped apples, celery and walnuts in mayonnaise?"), I have my old 3^rd grade schoolwork in a box here. This evening I'll pull it out and Forest and I can see where I really was at his age. I've a feeling it won't all be as rosy as I remember it.