I saw this plot twist coming.

In a plot twist worthy of the worst type of soap opera, my computer died micro-seconds after I posted my last LJ entry. It now… doesn’t work very well at all; I can go in for “about a minute” before it throws me out again, peppering the screen with error messages – more if I try to connect to t’interweb; the Internet explorer icon is effectively a death sentence for whatever is open…

I tried to solve the problem by loading Windows XP straight onto the hard-drive after it died (the previous time, I loaded XP onto the old version of XP, semi-correcting the problem), but, this time - part way through loading - a message popped up saying “unable to load Windows XP due to an internal error. Windows not installed on this machine. Please contact an administrator. Press F3 to continue”.

So… new hard-drive at lunchtime, methinks.

Don’t expect much from my home for a while so as I reinstall assorted programs & try to get the beast back to some degree of life. Thing is, its pretty bl**dy essential, as we’ve got to get it working so that C can use her study area for work – via the house PC acting as a hub - rather than the home PC (which reminds me, a trip to Ikea is on the cards too… * Gah *), also, I’ve got access to the English service bank account etc via the machine.

:o(

A quick aside, if I understand a previous post, is Office’97 not compatible with XP? If so, where can I get this open source equivalent that is compatible? And will it allow me to read / edit / modify MS Office documents & files?

S

(no subject)

I have a new hard-drive, ready to be insalled in my computer. Either that, or I will put it down somewhere in the study & never see it again...

S

Situation

Ok, this is probably tempting fate, but here goes...

we replaced the hard-drive & have installed windows XP on the new one and most of the stuff seems to be working & it has been for about 3 hours or so now... however...

...about 2 hours ago, just after XP had started installing itself (after formatting the new drive etc), it crashed out with the same error message as before; this time, it cant have been the old hard-drive, as it wasn't in the machine. So I removed one of the RAM chips instead (I have 2) thinking that if its memory, it might be the chips.

So far, so good, but as I say, this means bugger all, cos it could go at any point. But assuming that it is going to keep on working, then all I've got to do is get Microsoft messanger & Outlook express working - and then try to retrieve my old files...

S