ABCZ

It came to visit. And stayed. And would not go. And it did not give prior notice that it would be coming. And when it finally packed up and went home...it took our data with it.

Well....some of it. Actually, for once, I had us backed up fairly recently. But, to be honest, I'm pretty handy with computers - I think. I can figure most stuff out. This, stumped me. It came out of no where. I could not get past it ANY way I tried. I had a friend who does IT for a living help - no luck. I spent HOURS on the phone to Dell tech support (who ROCK, BTW. This computer is over 2 years out of warrantly, and they spent all that time, plus Fedex Overnighted me a new boot disk at NO charge. Awesome.) I replaced the hard drive. I tried to repair the OS. Nada.

So, we had to format and reinstall.

The good news - my computer is brand spanking new and sparkly clean and fast.
The bad news - I have to reinstall around 100 programs (literally).
The good news - I was backed up.
The bad news - I have to unpack about 80GB of data.
The good news - I can get e-mail again.
The bad news - First I have to sort through the 894 that I missed being down for 24 hours.
The good news - I didn't need to replace my hard drive afterall (even though I installed and uninstalled it about a dozen times while trying the new one.
The bad news - Now Best Buy probably won't take back the one we bought, because it has been installed.

Oh well....I guess it could have been worse.