Note to Calanda

Ah, gently aging XP machine that lives upstairs... Today I thought I would relieve you of a little of your burden by finally getting my old iTunes installation moved into the newer desktop machine downstairs via home sharing.

So I spent an hour and a half, or it might have been two hours, downloading iTunes 10 on our dodgy too-rural wireless broadband and had just barely got it running on you  when suddenly you began complaining that you needed chkdsk run on the F drive because something was corrupted.

Then you refused to boot and explained to me that I was going to have to run Windows Repair from the original CD to fix the corrupted config file. And no sooner had I begun doing so than then you explained sweetly to me that you couldn't see any hard drives to fix. (This being because they're plugged into their own controller, for which the CD perhaps understandably doesn't have a driver.)

Now you're crouching by the TV going BWAHAHAHA at me inside your little nearly-invisible computer thought balloon. Laugh while you can, you naughty creature. Tomorrow morning I yank your guts out by handfuls and remind you who built you in the first place. I will fix your drives, and in the process I will fix your wagon, and I shall have my iTunes in your despite. So BWA-de-ha-HA to you too.

(Note to self for the future: do *not* name any more computers after demon-haunted mountains even if the name is also that of a very good Swiss beer brewed nearby.)

The Calanda Saga Continues

So I finally got into Windows XP recovery console a few times and took a look around.

The error message I’d been receiving was this one: “Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: \WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM” …which pretty much means a corrupted registry file. This can be fixed in the console, though the fix is a touch  complex: see here.

…Whoopee. So I log in again, with that list of instructions before me, ready to go, and get: “Please type your administrator password.”

…I have NEVER used an admin password with this machine. Not once. Hit the carriage return, that’s always been the way. I now hit the carriage return in forlorn hope. “Incorrect password. Please type your administrator password…”

Gaaaah. The process naturally fails. Rinse & repeat several times. Reboot the machine one last time and walk away in despair.

Behind my back, IT BOOTS INTO XP. My machine is a drama queen. WHY am I surprised.

It starts running chkdsk. WTF-I-DON’T-EVEN, for this now starts throwing errors the likes of which I’ve never seen as it proceeds through the various virtual drives into which C is partitioned. “Correcting error in index.” “Deleting index entry.” “Recovering orphaned file.” And what gives me the twitches, “Insufficient space to recover…” Yes, the virtual C “drive” is very full. That’s one of the things that this has been about: emptying it out a little — specifically getting the guts of iTunes out of there.

(moan / headclutch)

So on we go. Calanda does this three or four more times. And then it once more fails to boot correctly (just to keep me interested) and once more shows me the “Windows Could Not Start…” herald. I sit down in front of it, humbled low on the little hassock I dragged up into the bedroom so I wouldn’t have to sit on the effing FLOOR in front of the machine to which I have always been very kind, and once more go through the routine to boot from the CD. Once more I make it into Recovery Console. And once more get asked for a password that doesn’t exist.

…Seriously, it’s starting to feel like some weird IT-based version of The Quiet Man around here. All I need now is some little old lady running up to me and curtsying and saying “Here’s a nice hammer to beat the lovely machine with.” BTW, thank you to all the nice people who have gone over to the Ebooks Direct store this morning and bought things, for whatever reason. You have cheered me up, because YOU ARE BUYING ME A HAMMER.

…Oh, look, Calanda has booted again, and without my blue Jupiter wallpaper! Why, this time it's destroyed my entire user profile! And look at the notice it's showing me: “The system has recovered from a serious error.”

NOT AS SERIOUS AS THE ONE IT'S ABOUT TO HAVE.

This machine is starting to make the TARDIS look well-behaved.

GAAAAAAAAH.