My luck with Windows this year has been about as bad as Pangor's run in with the phone company. Five times I've had to load windows.
Now in all fairness, the first two were upgrades to a couple of old computers so I could use Adobe's Creative Suite which requires XP. I then decided that I wanted something a little newer. I usually buy new components whose technology is about two years old. Tried and true and no bugs left in them. So the third load was to set up my "newest" build. Nice little homemade machine. Worked really well for 6 months. No problems. Then a hardware failure.
For years computers have hummed merrily along with little internal maintenance. About the time you were ready for a new card or extra memory, blow the dust out and button it back up. About once a year I would use a can of compressed air and "dust" the insides.
Not anymore These teeny tiny fans that are used on graphics cards and motherboards can become unbalanced in as little as 6 months! I learned the hard way. I should have seen it coming(I did hear it).
About the time I discovered Daz Studio, and started learning about Poser, that little fan started vibrating whenever I started the computer. I thought it was just a loose screw or something, because the vibration would shortly go away and all would be fine. Let this go one for a month, even though I knew better.
One day the noise is getting worse, so I decide to open of the side panel. Surprised by the amount of dirt buildup on the fans, I get my trusty can of compressed air and start shooting. Cover back on, power back on, computer sounds like a jackhammer pounding on granite Computer dead. No Boot Out to the kitchen table, clean completely. Hook everything back up. Nothing. Motherboard won't boot. My fault. Lesson re-learned don't take shortcuts with computers.
Well, after sorting out that the vibrating fan could have damaged more than the motherboard, I decided to build another machine. Since the discovery of all this neat 3D art and stuff, I bit the bullet (and my poor wallet) and got some state of the art hardware. First time in at least 10 years.
Everything went perfectly. All software back on, nothing lost in the crash due to a backup strategy, and back to learning and hunting for content on the web. Everything was fine for a couple months. I have windows configured for maximum performance, and use several utilities that I have found to keep the registry cleaned out, and generally running well. I decided for no real reason, to run Windows Checkdisk utility as the last step in some routine maintenance.
Big mistake! Windows chewed up my hard drive and spit it out violently against the wall. Could not boot into windows. Tried to repair off the Windows CD. Nope. Can't find the hard drive.
It is a good thing I learned DOS back in the pre-windows days, so I invoked the recovery console went in, did some magic, and got the computer back up. A bit unstable, but well enough to back up the few critical files that weren't on the backup drive. In searching the Microsoft Knowledge Base for why checkdisk may have corrupted the directory structure, I did learn one key item that warrants mentioning.
Windows XP will not properly recognize a hard drive that has a capacity larger than about 120 GB until after Service Pack 2 is installed. Now here is the Catch 22. Windows installer will partition and format any size drive you want to put it on. HOWEVER, until Windows XP with SP2 is fully installed, it may not properly recognize the drive as time goes on. So Windows happily installs itself onto a drive it can't properly use and at some point in the future, well, this may be an over simplification, but... crash.
I rush to reload everything again (I'm getting pretty good at this by now ). Back up and running. Get Poser. Start learning the program. Working on a calendar submission. Decide to make a simple wall prop in my CAD program that I can import in. CAD program won't open. Use a 3D floor plan program to create the prop. Later a couple of other minor software glitches. I'm thinking that in my haste to reload windows I may have misconfigured something deep in the forbidden depths of windows. So, I plan to take the computer down, do a clean install, keep a log, and get everything just right.
I get everything loaded except all the Poser content. Save loading the CAD program for last. IT WON'T OPEN! I reloaded Windows in vain
Now what? Every program works except one. It hangs on startup. Roll back a restore point. Step back take a breath. Rant a bit with some friends who will hopefully understand and sympatize. Calm down and try again.
What irks me is that I have some new ideas for models that I would need the precision of CAD that could be imported into bryce, and tweaked in Poser. Well, I'll figure it out.
Thanks for listening. I'm ready to browse the gallery for a little while, then back at it.
melamkish