To completely rebuild your system for no apparent reason.
Well actually I do have a reason and a genuine one at that. I'm forced to tool around the web on a 56k modem connection because - long story short - I can't get a digital line. Full stop. Period. At least not until we have evolved to the point when physical wires are no longer necessary to connect to the Web and all we need to do is just think about the Web to get on it. That's when my phone company will call me - they'll try to thought-call me but they'll then discover I only have an analogue line - to let me know I can upgrade to a fast digital connection. The bastards. So anyway, I'm surfing at 56k, did I say surfing? sorry I meant floating as in my mind I picture myself lying face down on a puny little kid's size surfboard slowly paddling around using only my arms as propulsion as all the onlooking proper surfer dudes point at me a laugh as they rip past me. If all that isn't bad enough, my connection has recently begun to stall during certain tasks like downloading a file or even just loading up a basic web-page. It just sits there, the progress bars freeze pages stop loading. Usually a reload unblocks it but not always.
My only guess at a diagnosis is that Windows XP has gotten so fubared up over the last 12 months that something, somewhere deep within it's five thousand-bajillion lines of code is mortally clogged up never to be de-clogged.
Everything's OK in Linux - Red Hat 8.0 Bluewave, very nice but still scary - so I'm sure it's not hardware related. And so, for the last couple of days I've been quietly doing the PC equivalent of preparing to move house, packing everything up into neat piles of folders, backing-up critical stuff like photos etc. and clearing down one of my disks in readiness for the big move, the day I nuke my system and do a complete re-install. Gulp.
I'm not looking forward to it, not looking forward to re-downloading all those Windows Update patches and service packs that'll no doubt take me another six months to download, presuming the whole blow-out fixes the problem of course. I'd thought that nuke/re-installs were a thing of the past, circa the win95/98 era. Nope. Although it's not required every couple of weeks as with the older Windows versions, as this 12 month old install ably demonstrated until recently.
I might be wrong - there's a first time for everything - and it could be something I can fix but I doubt it, and I suspect it would take me just as long to find out as it would to re-install from scratch. So re-install it is. This happens every December with me, must be some kind of PC nesting instinct getting me ready for a new year or a subliminal new years resolution. I wish it would stop.
Well actually I do have a reason and a genuine one at that. I'm forced to tool around the web on a 56k modem connection because - long story short - I can't get a digital line. Full stop. Period. At least not until we have evolved to the point when physical wires are no longer necessary to connect to the Web and all we need to do is just think about the Web to get on it. That's when my phone company will call me - they'll try to thought-call me but they'll then discover I only have an analogue line - to let me know I can upgrade to a fast digital connection. The bastards. So anyway, I'm surfing at 56k, did I say surfing? sorry I meant floating as in my mind I picture myself lying face down on a puny little kid's size surfboard slowly paddling around using only my arms as propulsion as all the onlooking proper surfer dudes point at me a laugh as they rip past me. If all that isn't bad enough, my connection has recently begun to stall during certain tasks like downloading a file or even just loading up a basic web-page. It just sits there, the progress bars freeze pages stop loading. Usually a reload unblocks it but not always.
My only guess at a diagnosis is that Windows XP has gotten so fubared up over the last 12 months that something, somewhere deep within it's five thousand-bajillion lines of code is mortally clogged up never to be de-clogged.
Everything's OK in Linux - Red Hat 8.0 Bluewave, very nice but still scary - so I'm sure it's not hardware related. And so, for the last couple of days I've been quietly doing the PC equivalent of preparing to move house, packing everything up into neat piles of folders, backing-up critical stuff like photos etc. and clearing down one of my disks in readiness for the big move, the day I nuke my system and do a complete re-install. Gulp.
I'm not looking forward to it, not looking forward to re-downloading all those Windows Update patches and service packs that'll no doubt take me another six months to download, presuming the whole blow-out fixes the problem of course. I'd thought that nuke/re-installs were a thing of the past, circa the win95/98 era. Nope. Although it's not required every couple of weeks as with the older Windows versions, as this 12 month old install ably demonstrated until recently.
I might be wrong - there's a first time for everything - and it could be something I can fix but I doubt it, and I suspect it would take me just as long to find out as it would to re-install from scratch. So re-install it is. This happens every December with me, must be some kind of PC nesting instinct getting me ready for a new year or a subliminal new years resolution. I wish it would stop.