bbot's blog

Lo', it was Said that I have had A Humorous Computer Experence and that it should be Wrote Up. And it was Done. Various things delayed the posting of this, so I back-dated it.

I am an Idiot
or
Why you should always always always make regular backups.

So I'm at my localCompUSA, and I buy a three position fan speed controller, because the fan on my heatsink is rather loud.

I get home and connect the controller, setting it to its lowest setting. The computer gets through POST and crashes while starting windows. I swear, crank it back up to its highest setting again and boot into the bios to slow down the processor. I wind the cpu down to 600mhz from 1100mhz, and attempt to boot into windows. Everything goes okay, I login, start all the programs, and the computer reboots itself in the middle of everything.

The computer post's, windows starts, and chkdsk does its thing, without finding any problems. I login, start all the programs, again and Opera and Gnucleus crash. Opera crashing is not too unusal in the earlier releases, but even then it crashed only when I visited sites that used non-standard tags. What is really strange is gnuclious crashing. It never does that. I go and schedule chkdsk for the next reboot. After finishing that, a system window hangs and I kill its task. Explorer dies, the taskbar vanishes, and explorer respawns. I notice that the tooltips that pop up over icons no longer match the icons themselves.

In the grand windows way, I hope a reboot makes everything work again. After POST, chkdsk starts, takes forever (almost a hour) and finds no problem. Computer reboots, POST's and attempts to boot into windows. Windows hangs, then reboots.

Computer POST's, emergency chkdsk starts, takes forever, and finds two errors. Computer reboots, starts into windows, and crashes, reboots.

After starting again, the system menu pops up, asking me if I want safe mode, last good configuration, or normal windows. I try normal windows. Windows crashes, reboots.

I try safe mode. Windows starts, scrolls through a huge list of errors, and crashes, reboots.

At this point I remember I have made no backups for the month, nor have I made an Emergency Repair Disk. The only backup I have made recently is a disc of mp3's for a road trip. The last system backup was almost three months ago. I reflect on the wisdom of making regular backups.

Ah ha!, I think. A repair install would be the perfect solution! I hunt up the windows install disk(hunt, literally. Took me five days, 7,232 rounds of ammounition, and three good men to capture it. And you wouldn't belive the fight it put up going into the drive! Anyhoo...) and attempt a repair install. Windows Setup loads all of the drivers and pulls a blue STOP screen. I reboot. Windows setup does the same thing. I reboot a third time. Windows setup hangs before even starting the drivers.

I hunt up a Knoppix disc and pop it in. It boots and runs perfectly, yet slowly. I call it a night. It is not a hardware problem, this I now know. At this time is sounds like some files that windows needs to run were corrupted when the computer crashed while booting. At some point during this the dvd drive I had ordered over googlegear arrived.

The next morning I wake, and install the dvd drive in the computer. It is now the master on ide channel 1, with the sony cd-rw as slave. The computer boots, and I place the knoppix cd in the dvd drive.

Nothing happens. The monitor shows "No signal." I reboot the computer. No signal. I power cycle the monitor several times. No signal. I disconnect the dvd drive's power cable and reboot. The monitor gets No Signal a few times, and then starts working again. I swear. I power cycle the monitor again. No Signal.

I reconnect the dvd drive again. No signal.

The next day I turn on the monitor before starting up the computer. The monitor gets a signal. There is much joy. I boot into knoppix and attempt to root through my ntfs drive containing all my files. Quite surprisingly, knoppix can read ntfs. I attempt to play one of the mp3's I have. It plays. I attempt to play a video file. It plays. I reflect of the neccesity of making windows work again. I reflect on the fact that it takes knoppix 45 seconds to open xmms. I log out of knoppix and move the cd from the dvd drive to the cd-rw, because I want to try and play a dvd, and I can't do that when the operating system is running off the dvd drive.

Knoppix boots. I open videoLAN and set the dvd drive to /mnt/cdrom1 from /dev/dvd. I attempt to play the disc that is in the drive. Nothing happens. I swich to xine. It starts reading the disc and crashes. I try again. Same thing. The Matrix crashes it. I try The Transporter. Xine gets through all the "do not copy under penality of law. No, seriously" and crashes. I give up on dvd playback, and see about fixing my computer. I attempt to delete /windows/system32. Linux helpfully informs me that /dev/hda1 is mounted as a read-only filesystem.

I boot into the command line knoppix. Now I can't even find the hard drive to delete the folder. Linux informs me that /dev/hda1 does not exist and that /mnt/hda1 has nothing in it. I call it a night.

Several Days Later: I begin hardware troubleshooting. I swap out the GeForce2 MX with an old TNT2. No change. I swap out the processor, and it manages to get into windows setup. There is much rejoicing.

A little backstory here: A little over a year ago, I went through my usual heatsink cleaning routine, only this time the computer wouldn't boot. Some informal hardware testing revealed that the processor was dead. Much sadness. So I went out and bought a new processor for the machine. I swapped the old Pentium 3 866mhz Coppermine(133mhzFSB version) For the new Pentium 3 Celeron2 (100mhzFSB). It Just Worked, and I was happy.

Swapping in the old coppermine revealed that the processor still worked, although it wouldn't even try to boot at its old, stock, non overclocked speed of 866mhz. Given that the heatsink I now use is vastly beefier and better cooled than the stock heatsink, it is obvious that the clock chip must be fried. Or something.

After two days of blissful problem-free computing, windows informs me that the file C:\$MFT is corrupt. Everything is working perfectly, and yet this file is corrupt. I check C:\ in Explorer and I can't see it. A search can't find it. I can see all the other system files, but not this one. Whatever.

At that point, I didn't actually know what $MFT is, or what it does. I google it, and discover that it is the Master File Table. The index file for the entire drive. The file that is so important, it is flagged so nothing can write over it, or even near it, lest it be deleted, or fragmented in any way. The one file that so important, not even the Administrator can see it, or try to edit it.

Not something you want to be corrupt.

So I schedule chkdsk for the next reboot. Chkdsk runs after said reboot and fixes the one error it finds. Yay.