Sit right back and you'll hear a tale. A tale of a faithful ditto drive?
Well, anyway -- I was working late last night on a clients system. I had to
download some drivers off of the net. I did so. Then I decided to shut down
my system and finish up my clients stuff. I forgot one of the drivers so I
had to restart my system. Everything looked normal All the right beeps, the
ATI logo spinning... and then I get a message: Can't Find WIN.COM. What do
you mean can't find win.com!!!???
I changed directories to Windows, typed in win and it looked like it was
going to boot. Then what appears? You may Now Shut Down! What!?!? Any way,
needless to say my computer had a small crash. I can't figure out what
happened to my win.com.
I decided to just re-install windows and everything should be fine. No. In
fact it got worse. My explorer.exe file was corrupt. Do you see where this
is going? Because I had MSIE 4.0 installed, and it plays with the way
Windows looks and feels, it apparently also modifies the explorer.exe file
such that re-installing windows only confuses the computer (especially if
you don't over-write the explorer.exe file, which makes no difference in the
long run because of all the other files you must over write).
Onward I must go. After three re-install fails I turned to my friend: The
IOMEGA Ditto Easy 3200 Tape Back Up Unit. This was a product I researched
and the people of this list helped me buy last year. Well, my last back up
was on December 31st, 1997. I fired the thing up and sure enough it restored
my main drive.
There was one other odd thing that happened. A file appeared on my desktop
called C. That's it, "C". I erased it, but it kept coming back. Apparently
it stored all of my Outlook Express and Internet data, like some sort of
undestroyable safeguard.
There are a few glitches though. Any programs that have a DAD interface
won't work now. I had to remove Lotus Smart Suite 97, about to remove Corel
Suite, and I had to manually remove the corresponding registry files. Aside
from that the computer loads, but hangs for about 10 seconds before I'm
allowed to use the mouse. I have a feeling that this is because there are
pointers in the registry to things that no longer work (i.e. Lotus, Corel).
If any one had any other suggetsions as to why this may be, please feel free
to e-mail me, I'd love the help.
Lessons Learned:
1. Things can go wrong, even though I don't employ anyone named Hadley.
2. People on the list give good advice, especially on the Ditto drive!
3. There is a mystery win.com thief.
4. The Windows Registry is like a pig in mud!
Later folks,
Guido Piraino
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Guido Piraino [ [log in to unmask] ] [[log in to unmask] ]
SaultGate Computers [ http://www.geocities.com/~the_coppertop/gate.htm
31 Rossmore Road, Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario Canada
(705) 949 - GATE [phone]
(705) 949-6081 [fax]
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