The Calanda Saga Continues

[dianeduane]

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.

Comments

[lapislaz.livejournal.com]

Let me know when the fisticuffs start. Me and mine want to get our bets down. My money's on you.

[jaxomsride.livejournal.com]

I think the only solution might be a nuke, never mind a hammer. Well, once you've got off what you want to keep from the hard drive.

[siliconshaman.livejournal.com]

*ahem*

This (http://www.mydigitallife.info/easily-login-to-windows-xp-with-no-password-administrator-account-backdoor-trick/) might be of some use

Try Linux?

[jcfiala.livejournal.com]

Best thing for the moment might be to download a live Linux CD/DVD, burn it, and the launch the machine in Linux so you can copy files off of the drive to make space.

Knoppix is a good solution, although Ubuntu's install disks are also live CDs.

Re: Try Linux?

[keristor.livejournal.com]

Much though I usually dislike recommending alternative operating systems (it tends to just annoy the person with a problem) in this case where the imperative is to get the data off onto a safe medium I think that's the simplest way to do it. I'd plug in a USB drive (which are cheap these days, and can be used for backup later) and transfer everything to that.

I'd use http://www.sysresccd.org/ as it comes with all of the necessary utilities, which 'live' disks often don't (they come with the ones essential for installation, but others they expect to download), including partitioning and copying partitions. (If that site is down -- it has a limited number of connections available -- then you can go directly to http://sourceforge.net/projects/systemrescuecd/ to do the download).

In particular it includes a copy utility which can handle errors on the disk, which ordinary copying can't, it bombs out, and these days you don't even get the Abort/Retry/Ignore option.

[barberio.livejournal.com]

You know, if you used a Mac you'd be... wait... no, put that down... no... no... stop I... Aiegghghlglasepdw...

[kengr]

An admin password may have been set as part of the original install. Or you may have picked up a virus that set one.

Years back, I had to deal with a system where the owner had not used the machine for a year or so and had forgotten the password. We bought a utility that lets you clear the password. You boot off a Floppy. CD or thumb drive and the program goes looking for passwords on the system (Windows accounts and MS office, maybe other things).

It then presents a list of the logins/users and lets you pick which passwords you want to clear (no, it doesn't list passwords).

http://www.password-changer.com/

[kengr]

If you can't afford a copy of Active Password Changer, drop me a note and we'll work something out. I can always claim it was a "service call" :-)

[zenfrodo.livejournal.com]

You *do* know that Windows was designed by the Lone Power, right?

Of course it's gonna fail when the YW Writer tries to work on it.

[kayshapero]

Too late, I ransacked the Ebooks Direct store for your stuff weeks ago.

As a co-worker once said to me, you should never kick a computer. Use a double bladed axe!

Every few years, when I decide this thing (my laptop) is just getting a bit TOO much out of hand I clear the disk and reload the operating system from scratch. I usually have to do the initial reload more than once because something I load right after it blows up, but at least it does clean it up from all the little bits of leftovers from programs that were theoretically deleted from the system and stuff. (And I don't have to give it my Admin password. :) )

[keristor.livejournal.com]

"you should never kick a computer"

Wait, you mean 'boot' isn't supposed to be taken literally?

(The difference between software and hardware: with hardware, when it goes wrong, you hit it and sometimes it starts working again; with software, you get the next version which will have at least some different bugs. I write software...)

[kayshapero]

Nope, but "hack" obviously is.. :)

I, too, write software - anyway I started out doing Fortran and assembler, and these days mostly make websites with html/css which probably counts more as text editing. Then again, lately it seems to want to be a true language - you know, where the plural of box is boxes, the plural of fox is foxes, and the plural of ox is oxen... (hint - to center text takes one instruction, to center images requires the Secret Password...)

[kayshapero]

Have you any idea if when you find a book on Amazon that's only available from parties who've linked through, and there are "new" copies and "used" copies if this makes any difference whatsoever to whether the author gets their cut? I mean - "used" would mean no, but how "new" is "new"? (OK, in this case it's a 20+ year old novel you and Peter wrote in an otherwise completely forgettable series that Fred Patten reviewed in Yarf in one of the stack of reviews I am now cataloging for my sins or anyway for being fool enough to volunteer to rewrite his entire website for him and add a Lot Of Stuff...)

[dduane.livejournal.com]

...Hmm, good question.

Briefly: the only time the writer gets a royalty is when a copy is bought from the publisher. If the third-party sellers bought their stock from the publisher, then I got paid a royalty. If they bought it from anyone else, then I didn't.

So in the great scheme of things, I (or we) normally get paid a royalty once in a given physical book's life cycle: after that, nothing. There are two exceptions to this rule:

(a) Libraries in the UK participate in an agreement that means over the years an author gets "secondary royalty" payments based on how often library copies of your book are loaned out and read. This is administered by the Authors' Licensing and Collecting Society at http://www.alcs.co.uk/ .

(b) If the novel in question is almost any work for hire -- meaning almost all licensed / shared world works: Net Force, Space Cops, the SeaQuest novelization -- I/we get no royalty regardless of who the book's bought from, as almost all w-f-h contracts are for a "flat fee", like most European TV work. I do get royalties from Trek novels, but they are small (and here I'm an exception to the rule: most writers don't, any more).

Does that clarify?

[kayshapero]

OK, so by the time it turns up in someone's overstock and gets offered for sale via but not directly from Amazon, any royalties have already been paid. Which means I don't have to feel guilty about going for the 1 cent plus $3.99 postage used copy instead of one of the "new" ones from the clearinghouses. :) Thanks - I'd wondered about this for awhile.

computer woes

[lisa prolman (from livejournal.com)]

I personally am a *big* fan of the "speak softly and carry a large hatchet" approach to computer repair. I do IT at my job, and my co-workers are continually astonished at how effective the strategy appears to be. I highly recommend it to all.