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...After 7 years of this, I'm tired and can't take much more of it... 
My basic specs: Double-boot system
40 GB drive sporting WinXP Pro; used as main drive; installed in December; is the primary boot drive
120 GB drive sporting Win98SE; used as data drive; installed sometime early last year or year before, great deal too ($150USD for a drive worth $400USD at the time, price-tagging error at BestBuy
)
700Mhz Athelon
Last night, while using the Win98SE drive, Norton AV '03 warned me that both the Master Boot Record and Boot Record had been "altered" and asked me what to do. 1) Do nothing as changes were expected, 2) Restore a previous record as changes were unexpected or 3) Ignore the problem and hope it goes away (I don't remember what the third option was). I picked the second option, since in my experiance only naughty things change the Boot Records and attract the attention of my AntiVirus software at the same time.
Friday afternoon when I came home, I turned my computer back on...the WinXP Pro drive was hosed. Wouldn't even boot.
After fighting with it for 45 minutes or so, finally got it to boot off the Win98SE drive so I could scan the other drive for viruses...NAV2003 couldn't even scan the 40GB drive. It was hosed. My stepdad, who's worked with computers longer than I've been alive (me=22 in April) couldn't make much headway into solving the problem either. Says he might try something later this weekend, but doubts it will work since the other things we tried didn't do anything...other than irritate us further.
Win98 has been a pain in the arse forever too, though the SE updates improved things a good bit. But I installed WinXP to get relief from Winblows98. *Sigh*
I suppose this is a good thing to have happen. While the 40GB WinXP drive is relatively new and doesn't have much of value on it, the 120 GB Win98SE drive is loaded with gajillions of files (somewhere over 400,000 or so equaling 75GB). Some of that stuff has followed me from as far back as Winblows 3.0 or earlier, though most of the really ancient stuff is circa Win95. 1000+ mp3's, almost 100 games plus God-knows-how-many addon files and mods, documents, programs, earlier versions of programs that have since been fukkered-up (KaZaA 2.0 vs. earlier versions anyone?). Porn? Well, let's just say I'll live...with the pain of losing just over 30GB or 25,000+ files of it collected since 1998 (movies, pics, lists, websites). <-- That's perhaps the worst cleanup job I face if I so choose since most of it is just crap that I'm too lazy to sort through, and at 25,000+ files, you'd be a little put-off by the thought of organizing that much too...
At most I'd say only 5 to 10 GB of it is worth anything to me. It's gay porn before anyone asks...and no assinine homophobic comments either. 
Against 400,000+ files (75GB) of stuff, I just don't know how best to deal with all of it. I'm stand to lose A LOT of little treasures: hard-to-find old games; songs that were a b*tch to track down (Orlando di Lasso's "Bon Jour, Et Puis Quelle Nouvelle?" circa 1500's); really good quality "adult" material that's not the same old crap one might find over-and-over-and-over-and-over-and-over...; all manner of mods for games that I'd never be able to find again since they're so obscure (the mods not the games); and God-knows-what-else. Sure, ya'll might advise me to just make backups of my data, but here's the problem with that plan: there's so much of it, and some of it is so old, and some of it has been touched by viruses in the past, and some of it has gotten corrupted in the past, and there's only so many times the registry checker can scan and fix a problem and viruses NAV2003 can find...it's just TOO DAUNTING a task to figure out how much of it is really worth dealing with any more.
My plan, if my stepdad can't get things working again, is to track down certain mp3s, documents, addresses (email and web), and a few previous versions of programs I use that are still good, burn them onto a few CDs, format both drives and reinstall WinXP Pro on the 40 again and Win98SE on the 120, and start anew.
I've known this day would come since 1996 when I had my first computer crash. Old stuff corrupted and new stuff infected. Cleaned up my computer. Rinse, wash, repeat for 7 years.
*Sigh...*
And it'll be a cold day in hell before I switch to a Mac...so don't waste your time even suggesting it.
My basic specs: Double-boot system
40 GB drive sporting WinXP Pro; used as main drive; installed in December; is the primary boot drive
120 GB drive sporting Win98SE; used as data drive; installed sometime early last year or year before, great deal too ($150USD for a drive worth $400USD at the time, price-tagging error at BestBuy
)700Mhz Athelon
Last night, while using the Win98SE drive, Norton AV '03 warned me that both the Master Boot Record and Boot Record had been "altered" and asked me what to do. 1) Do nothing as changes were expected, 2) Restore a previous record as changes were unexpected or 3) Ignore the problem and hope it goes away (I don't remember what the third option was). I picked the second option, since in my experiance only naughty things change the Boot Records and attract the attention of my AntiVirus software at the same time.
Friday afternoon when I came home, I turned my computer back on...the WinXP Pro drive was hosed. Wouldn't even boot.
After fighting with it for 45 minutes or so, finally got it to boot off the Win98SE drive so I could scan the other drive for viruses...NAV2003 couldn't even scan the 40GB drive. It was hosed. My stepdad, who's worked with computers longer than I've been alive (me=22 in April) couldn't make much headway into solving the problem either. Says he might try something later this weekend, but doubts it will work since the other things we tried didn't do anything...other than irritate us further.
Win98 has been a pain in the arse forever too, though the SE updates improved things a good bit. But I installed WinXP to get relief from Winblows98. *Sigh*
I suppose this is a good thing to have happen. While the 40GB WinXP drive is relatively new and doesn't have much of value on it, the 120 GB Win98SE drive is loaded with gajillions of files (somewhere over 400,000 or so equaling 75GB). Some of that stuff has followed me from as far back as Winblows 3.0 or earlier, though most of the really ancient stuff is circa Win95. 1000+ mp3's, almost 100 games plus God-knows-how-many addon files and mods, documents, programs, earlier versions of programs that have since been fukkered-up (KaZaA 2.0 vs. earlier versions anyone?). Porn? Well, let's just say I'll live...with the pain of losing just over 30GB or 25,000+ files of it collected since 1998 (movies, pics, lists, websites). <-- That's perhaps the worst cleanup job I face if I so choose since most of it is just crap that I'm too lazy to sort through, and at 25,000+ files, you'd be a little put-off by the thought of organizing that much too...
At most I'd say only 5 to 10 GB of it is worth anything to me. It's gay porn before anyone asks...and no assinine homophobic comments either. Against 400,000+ files (75GB) of stuff, I just don't know how best to deal with all of it. I'm stand to lose A LOT of little treasures: hard-to-find old games; songs that were a b*tch to track down (Orlando di Lasso's "Bon Jour, Et Puis Quelle Nouvelle?" circa 1500's); really good quality "adult" material that's not the same old crap one might find over-and-over-and-over-and-over-and-over...; all manner of mods for games that I'd never be able to find again since they're so obscure (the mods not the games); and God-knows-what-else. Sure, ya'll might advise me to just make backups of my data, but here's the problem with that plan: there's so much of it, and some of it is so old, and some of it has been touched by viruses in the past, and some of it has gotten corrupted in the past, and there's only so many times the registry checker can scan and fix a problem and viruses NAV2003 can find...it's just TOO DAUNTING a task to figure out how much of it is really worth dealing with any more.
My plan, if my stepdad can't get things working again, is to track down certain mp3s, documents, addresses (email and web), and a few previous versions of programs I use that are still good, burn them onto a few CDs, format both drives and reinstall WinXP Pro on the 40 again and Win98SE on the 120, and start anew.
I've known this day would come since 1996 when I had my first computer crash. Old stuff corrupted and new stuff infected. Cleaned up my computer. Rinse, wash, repeat for 7 years.
*Sigh...*
And it'll be a cold day in hell before I switch to a Mac...so don't waste your time even suggesting it.
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