Ah, the joys of
software.
Magazine cover disks, to be precise. My wife needed a 3-d modelling program to create some new objects for the house design program we use. The latter imports objects (via another program, supplied) from TruSpace - a popular cover disk filler and free up to version 3.
She installed it. (Not me!)
Her computer would no longer boot.
It was my fault for buying magazines with cover disks, of course :-).
I spent yesterday re-installing her Win98SE and MSOffice software. After which her computer booted but failed to ask for a user name and otherwise behaved oddly. Useable but very odd. The "re-install" I'd done appeared to have been somewhat half-hearted - some settings had been retained.
After further minor, but continual, problem, this morning we gave up trying to repair the install and executed
DELTREE /y WINDOWS
which was satisfying - if rather
long-winded. Then re-installed.
Ugh, drivers... lots of drivers. "Unidentified device"s, too - which disk does it want?!! "I thought Windows was meant to be plug'n'play," she said. Win98SE failed to even see the NIC - we had to run the setup.exe from its own CD! I think we're down to just the one unidentified device, now...
I guess I'll be feeding the MSOffice (Premium) disks this afternoon...
Hmm,
however.
This afternoon we spent finishing of the final preparations for the loft conversion and discussing (read, "arguing") about the merits of Microsoft Windows XP. We're buying it. Okay, it's got to be better than Win98 as it's WinNT but... hmm, it just doesn't feel right...
Well, the deed has been done and the new version purchased from dabs.com. We shall see, I suppose, whether its legendary stability is a myth...
Looks like it'll be arriving tomorrow - DABS shipped it already...