Fresh Digital Start...

Blue Screen of Life?
Originally uploaded by swang.

It's been a busy but good weekend just past, and since my laptop has been flaking out a bit lately, I've decided to wipe it all and reinstall everything and get the new windows smell... Mmmmm... :)

Not without spending most of Saturday backing up all my stuff including pics, mail and other misc. stuff, then reinstalling it that night with some dramas. Firstly I had slipstreamed service pack 2 into a WinXP install disk that I had, but when I used that to reinstall, and it asked me for my product key, I flipped my laptop over and typed in the product key... hmmm... wrong key... turns out that the version that I had was for a volume licensing version which the NEC OEM product key didn't work for... Doh! Ended up digging up the product recovery disk from NEC to reinstall windows then manually installing the service pack after... *grumble*

Also when I did finally get windows installed it asked me to activate so I did it through the internet, but said I had an invalid product key... Hmmmm... I suppose it made sense, I mean the key was used to initially install windows, and now it thought that I used it on a different machine so a quick call to microsoft should sort it out... wrong! Their IVR telephony system was crap, I mean the announcements were incomprehensable... If you've watched the Peanuts cartoons on tv, it sounded like the adults talking in the cartoon... "Bwah bwah bwah bwah... bwah bwah bwah bwah... press 2..."

After the third time through the options I finally managed to get through the right channel, typed in a long stream of digits provided by the computer then talked to some indian dude who finally sorted me out. I thought I'd do everyone a favour and tell him about the faulty telephony IVR system and he said "Thank you sir, we'll fix it... Good Bye!" Yeah like he was going to something about it... :P

Max chilling out...
Originally uploaded by swang.

Anyways, laptop is back up and running, even managed to reinstall most of the important stuff like the digital camera software and even found an update on the Canon website so the new proggy is even better than before! Going to go easy on the re-installation and only put back what I'd actually use... :) This all happened yesterday and Max the little furball sat quietly behind me in the office and slept while I spend a lazy Sunday afternoon getting my laptop back to life... :)

Oh, and Hannah had her jabs today, 2 in fact and some polio drops... poor little precious girl of mine screamed a bit, but was fine after... what a trooper! She's a brave little one and I was thinking about her quite a bit today at work even though I was flat out again... I even had a chat to her before I went to work to let her know that Daddy will be praying for her and she'll be fine and be a brave little girl... I get all gushy talking about it now... :)