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Mar. 29th, 2003 12:57 pm*sigh*
Yesterday vanished. I was picked up 10ish by Hobbes, taken to therapy, and then carted off to fix his machine.
Again.
This is the fifth time he's managed via clumsiness or AMAZINGLY bad luck to kill a machine I've built for him. Most folk, if they try to install new video drivers, they work. If they don't work, 9.95 times out of ten it can be rolled back to the previous drivers and life goes on. He installed new video drivers. The machine would no longer boot. Not even to 'safe' mode (which is a whole -different- set of painful jokes). I spent a good bit of time last Tuesday on the phone with him, talking him through a step-by-step recovery. Were the vid drivers the issue? No.
He installed new video drivers, and managed to kill his sound drivers AND his NIC drivers. Ay, caramba.
We ripped it -all- out yesterday, installed a new drive as his root partition, and reinstalled from the ground up. When he dropped me back here last night at 1:30am, his machine was running... albeit without the high end video drivers that I needed to download and burn for him. He Y!M'd me this morning... It refuses to boot.
*buries her head in her hands*
I'm about at the point of doing a full blown XP install, and LOCKING HIM OUT OF THE ADMINISTRATOR ACCOUNT... on his own machine. He's on his way up here to get me again... Nero's almost done burning my entire driver archive so I have it on hand. This time we're blowing it all away, and I'm rolling him back to Win98SE. There's little being done for 98 anymore in the way of patches and service releases, so if I install all the latest and greatest drivers for him, he'll not have a reason to tinker.
Maybe that'll work. I understand that /my/ machine is going to have issues from time to time; it's built out of second and third hand parts that I've scavenged during upgrades on everyone else's machines. But all of the hardware in Hobbes' machine is -new-. I've even still got all of the receipts for it! (Those familiar with my 'black hole' filing system will understand just how in-freakin-credible that is). I just don't understand how one person, who really only plays games and does no coding or overclocking or tweaking, can kill so -many- machines.
*snerk* Maybe he'll decide to 'upgrade' again, and I'll inherit the Trinity and 1ghz Athlon processor. That's how I got the Kinpo mainboard and slot A 950 Thunderbird, after all.
In other news, I went over in exacting detail with my therapist the mood crash and quasi-suicidal state I landed in Friday night. Relax, Brian. I'm not hiding it; I'm trying to -fix- it. It's frightening that that can hit so hard and so fast, literally out of the blue. My appointment frequency's been stepped up, as has my next appointment with the medicating psych to discuss changes/increases in my current meds.
Yeah, I'm crazy. If you hadn't figured that out by now, well... read a bit closer.
Anyway, Hobbes'll be here any minute. Nero just finished the final burn, and I'm gonna say g'bye to Megan and have a smoke while I wait. Hopefully today won't be as long as yesterday.
Well, I can hope.
~Ellie-chan
Yesterday vanished. I was picked up 10ish by Hobbes, taken to therapy, and then carted off to fix his machine.
Again.
This is the fifth time he's managed via clumsiness or AMAZINGLY bad luck to kill a machine I've built for him. Most folk, if they try to install new video drivers, they work. If they don't work, 9.95 times out of ten it can be rolled back to the previous drivers and life goes on. He installed new video drivers. The machine would no longer boot. Not even to 'safe' mode (which is a whole -different- set of painful jokes). I spent a good bit of time last Tuesday on the phone with him, talking him through a step-by-step recovery. Were the vid drivers the issue? No.
He installed new video drivers, and managed to kill his sound drivers AND his NIC drivers. Ay, caramba.
We ripped it -all- out yesterday, installed a new drive as his root partition, and reinstalled from the ground up. When he dropped me back here last night at 1:30am, his machine was running... albeit without the high end video drivers that I needed to download and burn for him. He Y!M'd me this morning... It refuses to boot.
*buries her head in her hands*
I'm about at the point of doing a full blown XP install, and LOCKING HIM OUT OF THE ADMINISTRATOR ACCOUNT... on his own machine. He's on his way up here to get me again... Nero's almost done burning my entire driver archive so I have it on hand. This time we're blowing it all away, and I'm rolling him back to Win98SE. There's little being done for 98 anymore in the way of patches and service releases, so if I install all the latest and greatest drivers for him, he'll not have a reason to tinker.
Maybe that'll work. I understand that /my/ machine is going to have issues from time to time; it's built out of second and third hand parts that I've scavenged during upgrades on everyone else's machines. But all of the hardware in Hobbes' machine is -new-. I've even still got all of the receipts for it! (Those familiar with my 'black hole' filing system will understand just how in-freakin-credible that is). I just don't understand how one person, who really only plays games and does no coding or overclocking or tweaking, can kill so -many- machines.
*snerk* Maybe he'll decide to 'upgrade' again, and I'll inherit the Trinity and 1ghz Athlon processor. That's how I got the Kinpo mainboard and slot A 950 Thunderbird, after all.
In other news, I went over in exacting detail with my therapist the mood crash and quasi-suicidal state I landed in Friday night. Relax, Brian. I'm not hiding it; I'm trying to -fix- it. It's frightening that that can hit so hard and so fast, literally out of the blue. My appointment frequency's been stepped up, as has my next appointment with the medicating psych to discuss changes/increases in my current meds.
Yeah, I'm crazy. If you hadn't figured that out by now, well... read a bit closer.
Anyway, Hobbes'll be here any minute. Nero just finished the final burn, and I'm gonna say g'bye to Megan and have a smoke while I wait. Hopefully today won't be as long as yesterday.
Well, I can hope.
~Ellie-chan
