Even so-called 'computer professionals' like myself are plagued with computer problems from time to time -- and right now I'm being hit with the worst. Yesterday, my Thinkpad crashed in the middle of something innocuous -- and now it won't reboot, even in so-called 'safe mode'.
All of my extreme measures are failing: I went to Fry's and bought an external hard drive chassis, thinking I could hook that up to another computer and test the disk. I took the drive out of the laptop, put it in the chassis, and attached it to Shelby's computer -- which made her machine immediately crash! After that, I went back to Fry's, bought a USB floppy disk drive, and attached it to Shelby's machine so that I could make a set of Windows XP install disks -- because not only can they be used to install new copies of XP, they offer an option to fix old copies. Well, I made the disks, brought them over to my computer, and waited for it to chug through six disks' worth of setup material. I finally got to the Holy Grail, the last screen, where I pressed "R" to Repair an existing installation of Windows XP, and then -- crash!
Today I'll be taking my laptop and my screwdriver over to my dad's office in Tustin, to see if I can have better luck with plugging the drive into a machine there. If not, it's time to call IBM service -- which means that I'll be sitting on my thumbs for a few days, followed by a couple more slowed-down days as I start over from scratch with a blank hard disk.
(Side note: I hate Thinkpads. Everytime I find a "what kind of laptop should I buy?" discussion online, there's always a cheerleader who says "Buy a Thinkpad! Buy a Thinkpad! They're dependable! They're durable! They're well-engineered! They're bombproof! They're the very best machine that a hardcore road-warrior businessperson can possibly buy!!!! Rah rah rah!" This is the second Thinkpad I've had fail in exactly the same way -- and in the meantime, our 'consumer'-level Toshiba laptop, which has been dragged across the world and is a year older than both Thinkpads put together, is still going strong and is about to have its hard disk scrubbed so that it can be handed over to my little brother.)
But at least I still have my Mac! Hey, I can be a full-time Mac guy! And it could've been worse -- at least the machine didn't catch fire while we were out of the house ...
Posted by Kevin at January 19, 2005 08:48 AM