Frazzled….

It’s been a frustrating couple of days. Yesterday, B’s computer started playing up, with crashes and corrupted files. After spending all day trying to diagnose the problems, it became clear that the old Win 98 OS was falling apart. So, we agreed to reformat the drive this morning and install XP.
Well, it sounded like a good idea at the time. I naturally backed up all his important files and documents. That only took an hour; our computers aren’t networked, we are low on recordable CDs and his machine doesn’t have a DVD drive, so I had to take his drive off, cable it into my machine and copy the files over onto my drive.
Then I put his drive back, and the fun part began. Formatting the drive was easy, and something i always make a production number of, with a loud dramatic countdown to “Format C: /s Y/N?” (“YYESSSS!!!” I cry, stabbing the keyboard.)
But installing XP? No…. that wasn’t fun. On the first try, it got part-way through setup, then simply sat there, with an unmoving progress bar for over two hours. Trawling through the internet for answers, i only found a suggestion about using another set-up disk. I tried that, and started getting BSOD error messages. Starting again, with a fresh format produced the same results.
By teatime, I’d decided to throw in the towel and install W98 instead. It was getting obvious that, despite the hardware compatibility report not showing any confilct, B’s machine just couldn’t deal with XP
The W98 install went very easily. Until I started installing the programs. Then it was one crash after another. I’m wondering if there’s some fundamental hardware problem that causing all the crashing. The CD drive is old – maybe that’s the problem, though we’ve never had a problem with it before. Or maybe it’s the BIOS – several of the setup error messages mention adjusting the bios settings.
I’ve now given up for the night. Some programs have installed, on the third or fourth attempt; B only needs one more program to install and he can get going again. But I’ll leave it until the morning.
It’s late, I tired; my knees are aching from going up and down the stairs all the time to find program disks and download drivers. I’m anticipating a bad night tonight, so some painkillers are in order.