The first commandment in computing has devastating logic: if it works, don’t touch it. Despite its logic and being a common-sense rule, we are always tempted by believing that what we are going to do will improve our quality of life, when in fact it turns our life into sheer hell.
Let me start singing “Mea culpa” (it means, literally, “my fault” in Latin) right now, because I spent 5 hours on Friday trying to revert my PC to its original state, even though in the end it was a little improved. (Yippee!)
For several days already, whenever I booted my PC it would run CHKDSK on the disk partition where I have all my work files. Since all my files are quite safe, because they are backed up daily to an external drive (I’d never loose over 24 hours worth of work), I was not worried about the possibility of loosing my work files but rather about the likelihood that the disk might be somewhat damaged.
Then I tried to defragment the work partition and the utility I run for defragmentation would detect that CHKDSK was programmed for start up and until then, it would not defragment my disk. Despite running CHKDSK, my utility would not recognized it had been run and would throw the same error if I tried to defragment my disk.
Then I read in the Internet that my problem seemed to be quite common among XP users and the only solution consisted of formatting the disk.
At this stage, I realized that since I had edited the registry (I am a naughty girl, and quite stupid too) trying to erase the configuration for CHKDSK, I had deleted my safety net, the program GoBack that allows the reversal of the PC to a previous state.
It was not just GoBack that had stopped working, but the whole Norton SystemWorks was kaput. Let’s put it this way: Norton is not a smart program. In order to reinstall it, you must remove even the faintest trace that you had it before in your PC or it will throw an error, in which case you’ll have to follow a detailed 30-step list prepared by Symantec.
Anyway, since I can waste time anytime, five hours to get CHKDSK not to start up whenever it feels like and to realize I am too old to fight Norton (I’ll be switching to something more intelligent next month).
P.
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April 23rd, 2007 at 9:07 am
Hi Pilar!
Last week I experienced sth similar to what happened to you (fortunately, It was easier to solve). For next time, I recommend you to have around there a copy of a Linux Live-Distro (Ubuntu or Knoppix for example). With that you can access you hard disk with a Windows XP alike interface, recover your data (till the last byte), and once save, go on with that magical words: format C:.
When my friends come to ask me about an informatic problem (I am a sort of IT manager for them). I always tell them the best way to make Windows XP works properly is format every 6 months :D. And now, seriously. Forget about Norton, most of their products are fraking crap. And for backup purposes, you can use another programs, lighter and easier to use. I can recomend you Cobian Backup. It is licensed under GPL license, and works quite good. Anyway, just go to softonic.com and look up there :).
Hope it helps!
Olli
April 23rd, 2007 at 9:38 am
I was not formatting C, Olli, just the partition where I hold my work files. As for formatting every 6 months, are you kidding!? I got into that habit with Windows 98 and forgot about it with Windows 2000…
April 24th, 2007 at 9:34 am
I love the blog. Have a look at mine if you’re interested: http://transubstantiation.wordpress.com/
April 24th, 2007 at 9:44 am
Good luck with your blog; it looks quite interesting!
P.
April 24th, 2007 at 12:52 pm
No kidding! My laptop needs that with XP (although I have to recognise I do a lot of strange stuff with pc, with makes necessary this measure). Anyway, I have some cool recovery tools which makes easier (and less painful) the process. :D
April 24th, 2007 at 1:24 pm
:) Good luck!
I refuse to format but in extreme situations. What I do, though, is quite a bit of maintenance, to keep it spic and span…
P.