Computers Suck

After my last post the situation with my laptop continued to deteriorate. After a while the "last known good" configuration (which apparently should really be called the "we have no fucking idea if this is any good" configuration) no longer worked and I had to boot in "safe mode." The black screen of death with the oxymoronic PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA message seemed to imply I should boot in safe mode and uninstall malfunctioning software, but in fact you can't run uninstall in safe mode. I'd already uninstalled AFS, but VPN was still on the machine.

I took the machine down to UNC's IT support, which is supposed to be quite good. However, the automatic power-down functionality was no longer working, so I unwittingly used up the batteries sitting there in their lobby, and didn't have my AC adaptor with me.

Finally after I got home I spent an hour doing a reinstall of Windows XP (as an upgrade, so I didn't lose anything). Now the machine seems to be working OK, but I'm scared to try reinstalling AFS, which I sort of need.

This is all really great because I was worried I'd have nothing to do yesterday afternoon and evening.