It is well know in our household; I do hardware, and Dudette does software. And it usually stays that way. We're OK with the arrangement. We do crossover on simple things and life it good.
Over the last couple days, I've been cleaning out some stuff from my computer. Old programs I don't use any more, and never will. Docs and spreadsheets that no longer have any use to anyone went out also.
Simple clean up is good. It frees up space I could use for my next major screw-up.
On Saturday I was cleaning out my old ISP files. You know, do uninstall, then clean up the debris left behind. Life was good, should be able to free up about half a gig.
The uninstall went well, rebooted ok. Then I went after the stragglers. Did search, found the garbage and started deleting all the stuff associated to the old program. Rebooted, Uh...Oh.
Reboot started OK. But at a certain point I got a blue screen with text instead of graphics. "There may be a disk failure...checking files...recommend..." This does not look good.
System restarted...blue screen, more text...,system restarted...blue screen, more text...,system restarted...blue screen, more text. UH, OH!!
Escaped the file check and got into safe mode. Got asked if I wanted to restore to an earlier time. Not just YES. But HELL, YES...RIGHT NOW!
XP restored to a previous point in time. Takes some time, but it got me back up. Everything I uninstalled and deleted came back. I didn't think it work as well as it did. But I can tell you, it works.
Dudette came home around that time and jumped right in to help. Like I said, she does software.
She ran some basic tests to make sure the system didn't take a major hit. She then started cleaning up the files I wanted out in the first place. Turns out some of the files are shared and dependent to each other.
So, I got back up about 6 hours after the fun started. Lets not do that again anytime soon.
You haven't learned from my stories of Harry and his deleting stuff (read: files needed by the OS)? At least you didn't mess up as badly as he did!
Glad Sis could get you back up without too much trouble!
Posted by: bogie | November 30, 2003 at 09:39 PM
I am usually pretty good at watching out what I delete. The files in question were iconed and marked as relating to the program I uninstalled. Little did I know, or could see by looking at them, that they were threaded in with IE and the OS. This will still be an issue in the future cause those icons and files will still be floating around looking lost.
Posted by: Wichi Dude | November 30, 2003 at 10:18 PM
...not saying a word :^)...
Posted by: billy | December 01, 2003 at 12:56 PM
billy, you'd better say something, or you'll pop. We know you better. LOL
Posted by: Wichi Dude | December 01, 2003 at 03:46 PM
...so, remind me - what's an 'on' button look like :^)...
Posted by: billy | December 01, 2003 at 04:56 PM
I knew you couldn't resist. I would have to show you billy. The button is different on different boxes.
Posted by: Wichi Dude | December 01, 2003 at 08:15 PM