Unhandled Exceptions

Well, that may be a bit melodramatic, but Puppy did save me a TON of time and frustration.

As I was checking my email on my home computer today, it locked up. Now, the machine has been dragging a bit as of late, I thought it was due for another Windows reload (it reached it’s half-life and decayed to the point of no return). So, i reset the machine.

Much to my dismay, the BIOS seems to have become slightly finicky with my hard drives, i.e. it didn’t want to see them. It required me to physically turn off the power supply and turn it back on to get it to recognize.

That didn’t help, though. Still no Windows boot (tried safe mode, command prompt, the works). So, I tried reloading. Since I partition my hard drive, i am able to clear the main partition, reformat, and reload without fear of losing data. I did that, and my XP install had problems copying files to the HD.

My immediate reaction is “my hard drive is shot.” Now, i was nervous about leaving all of my other data (Quicken files, family photos and videos, email archives, etc) on a bad drive. So I downloaded the 98MB Puppy Linux iso, burned it to a CD, and viola, I’m on my machine. I was able to mount the drive, and I’m in the process of copying the data off of the bad drive and on to an external USB drive that I have. Once that’s done, I’ll use my work computer to burn backups of all that data, and then proceed to try and salvage my HD. Maybe it just needs a good wipe and format, we’ll see.

I will, however, be keeping this Puppy Linux disc very close at hand.