Inside the Mind of Suz

It’s so sad. I feel so defeated. Usually I don’t allow computer/internet things to win when there is conflict, but I find myself in a situation with my desktop comp (LeRoy) that I can’t fix. I’ve been tweeting about it a lot, and sorry if it’s annoying, but as a webmaster/web designer, I kind of need my main workhorse computer in order to get shit done!

I’ve been having start-up issues in the last 2 weeks. It started with Windows not loading completely. Think black screen with just a blinking cursor. It would take multiple attempts and upwards of 30 minutes to get my computer to boot.

Then, I started putting it into hibernation instead of shutting it down at night. This temporarily ended my start-up problems until one night, while I was sleeping, LeRoy woke up and then shut down. So I was back to my original issue.

I took to the internetz to find a solution. I learned that I likely had a Windows XP installation issue. LeRoy shipped without a Windows XP, so I had to find a copy. That was pretty easy. So, I went through the steps to “repair” my installation and it looked like it worked ok. Windows booted, then I got a crapload of errors and it shut down. I haven’t been able to log back on since!

It was then suggested that I try Ubuntu as an operating system. That didn’t work because the CD wouldn’t even boot.

I used my custom HP Recovery Disk #1 (it never asked for any of the other 2) to do a non-destructive recovery. I’ve done these before, so I felt comfortable with it. So, the recovery finished and I was told to reboot. But once I did, I started to get the following error:

NTLDR is missing
Press Ctrl+Alt-Del to restart

Great, huh? Back to the drawing board.

Spotmau PowerSuite and Ultimate Boot CD did nothing for me since the only CDs that LeRoy will recognize and boot from are the Windows XP installation and HP Recovery disks. He just ignores all other CDs and the above error pops up.

I saw that my next option was to put my Windows XP installation CD back in and boot up the Recovery console in order to fix the boot record. The directions seemed easy enough, so this shouldn’t be to hard, right? WRONG!

I get to the Recovery console and it asks for my Admin password. I don’t have one and never have. There’s no way for me to reset this when I can’t even boot into Windows! All of the solutions I saw to try Safe Mode and change it that way don’t work for me either because I can’t even pull up that option. F8 does not call up the Advanced Options menu when the computer first boots! The only command that appears to work when LeRoy first comes on is F1 which takes me to the Setup menu (BIOS).

My Windows XP installation CD no longer gives me a repair option. It only asks me to start a new install. It wants to override the C:/WINDOWS that’s already there or choose a new directory. Can I make a fresh install and keep all my current data? I feel like I can’t, but I’m not sure. There’s nothing that I can’t absolutely live without, but I’d like to keep my data if at all possible. Thankfully, my most important data is on my 2 external drives.

And I know that if I do a full system recovery that I will lose everything. There’s nothing wrong with my hard drive, so I don’t want to do that right now.

I may have to suck it up and just get a new computer. But if I do, I have to know I’ll be able to take that data off the old hard drive and move it to the new one. If it’s not possible to transfer my data, then I’d just assume try a full recovery and start over. That’d save me close to $1000 by not purchasing a new computer, ya know?

So, what do I do now? If anyone has any suggestions or last minute tips, I’m all ears! I want to make a decision sometime in the next few days one way or another. Rafa (my laptop I’m typing this post on) is great for now, but he wasn’t bought to use every day. It’s my travel companion that doesn’t enjoy heavy lifting. I don’t want to overuse him.

HELP?