My Netvista computer crashed on Monday. It was frozen when I went to use it in the morning and then it wouldn't boot. Nothing obvious was wrong when I ran diagnostics, but I didn't want to reformat/reinstall Windows XP because we have a lot of files on that machine. Were they backed up? Of course not.

I borrowed a Windows XP disk from someone (my recovery disk is on the hard drive, and it doesn't allow anything except diagnostics, or reformat/reinstall) and backed up/replaced registry files, then I managed to get the PC into safe mode. That was 3 am, late Tuesday/early Wednesday. The good news was, all the files were there. The bad news was it wasn't seeing the floppy drive or network, it couldn't get on the internet, or write to the CD drive.

After playing around the next day, I got the floppy drive back. However, I figured it would take about 5000 disks and the rest of my life to copy all the data. So, we went to Staples and got a zip drive. {An aside, it is a neat toy.} I installed that, and successfully copied the files.

Then I reformatted and reinstalled Windows. Everything worked, except for three things (audio, ethernet, sm bus). So, now I have the zip drive plugged into Old Faithful (the Aptiva) and I am downloading the drivers. It is a very (!)slow process over a dial-up connection. I can't believe it has taken me 4 days to get this far, and still I cannot use my cable modem.

I am using my dial-up connection to check email etc., but for my university Outlook account, access that way is slow and unreliable. So I am only responding to the most critical email. It will probably take me another week to catch up on all the work I have neglected.