Last night I was cleaning up my computer's boot drive because, well, it had accumulated a smattering of spyware and other rogue shit. Hey! If you want to run those key generators to crack software, you gotta pay the price.
Umm, not that I would do such a thing. I pay for my software. Yeah.
Sometimes, though, my paid-for software ends up getting re-installed. Normally I keep all of my keys in my e-mail archives, but for some older packages I didn't do that. You know, before my habits got ingrained. Yeah. That's right.
Anyway, I run Spybot Search and Destroy (http://www.safer-networking.org/), which is a great package, and cleaned most of it up.
But there was still a damaged system file, mshta.exe or somesuch. Technically, I suppose I could have deleted it (it is non-essential, from what I could tell). But, being a good computer user, I decided to follow Microsofts instructions and use the system file cleaner to make it all good.
Big mistake.
The sfc POS ran for a while and then stoppped... at about halfway. Nothing.
I wander downstairs and futz around a bit. Upstairs, no progress. Check the task manager and it's not using any CPU or anything.
Screw this. I turned off the computer (second big mistake).
Power up and, zowie! Can't read the HD! Damaged. Something (e.g. sfc) ate my drive format. Bastards.
This isn't the first time that some MS utility, in conjunction with my impatience, has destroyed my system.
So I guess I finally put on XP. I've been meaning to do that for months now, anyway, but didn't want to go through the hassle of re-installing all of my software.
At least all of my data is kept on the RAID-1 array. I learned my lesson the LAST time.
Oh, except for the one DRM license key I have. Because Microshit doesn't let me specify the location of my keys. Theoretically, though, I have a backup of it on my data drive... so we'll see if MS can cope.
Bastards.
Posted by Edwin at December 16, 2004 08:56 AM