Believe it or not, I had actually written up some notes yesterday early afternoon to make sure I did not leave out anything important from the blog update to wrap up the weekend. However, all that will have to take a backseat and may not even feature this evening. Why? Well let me put it like this, I am currently writing this post in Windows Notepad. Enough said? It started so well, I got up around 9.30am yesterday and with the sunshining, thought it was a day to get things done. After Football Focus, I was outside, cleaning the car. I actually spend a substantial amount of time polishing the interior. The exterior was not that bad (considering a late night trip into London a week ago, plus over five hundred M4 miles). So I just did a wash and rinse, dry and touch up. In any case, I had misplaced my wash mitt (it had been placed on the garden fence to dry and was still wet by the time my Mum pointed it out to be mid afternoon!). I bought Pav’s old heavy duty foam gun but have not been able to use it yet, as it does not connect to my Karacher Pressure Washer. I mentioned this to him on Saturday, and he has ordered me a replacement fitting tube and it should arrive in the next few days. I am also trying out some new foam, which is much better. As soon as it hits the body work, you can see it start to work. After completing my car, I headed inside to grab some food and catch Soccer Saturday (it had just clicked past 3pm). Then, it was on to car two, I vacuumed the interior as it was extremely dirty but did not go the full distance of washing the car, although I did think about it. I wanted to get back in and sort out all the paperwork and hit the rest of the tasks on my weekend list. Little did I know that I was hours away from having to having my weekend turned upside down. Perhaps I just tempted fate too much with a fresh tweet (almost exactly 24 hours ago) and it was all down hill from there. I watched the opening of Strictly Come Dancing on BBC1, while downloading music videos (more on those later). It was around 7.45pm, when I went to get some food and switched on my computer. This was my big mistake, I do not remember if Windows XP actually completely shut down (it could have been applying an update). However, it would be just over an hour before I would realise that my quiet night in was about to disappear out of the window for good. I got back to my room at 9pm, after dinner and with a smile on my face, put on my computer. Looking forward to downloading a few more mp3s and burning a new CD for the car. Not tonight, I’m afraid, after the BIOS screens, no Windows XP Splash screen. Okay, let me reboot, it might just be an odd glitch. Okay, maybe not, how about a complete cold boot. No. Okay, safe mode? Not working either, “Last Known Configuration That worked“. Nope, it was at this point I realised that I was in trouble and it was time for evasive maneouvers. I went and got the family Toshiba laptop (a four year old Satelite Pro) and got myself online and Googled everything and anything. I also came on MSN and checked my Facebook but that was in the background, I was determined to get my machine back up and running and not have to reinstall the OS. I discovered that the file which loads the Windows XP splash screen had become corrupt and needed replacing. Okay, not a problem, but all my setup discs for Windows XP (several SP2 slipstreamed plus an SP3 version I built at the end of June). Yes, you make recall, that I only recently rebuilt my PC, therefore the only data I needed to back up were some documents and web files (such as this blog) everything else I had already backed up, or been backing up every few weeks onto my portable hard drive. Yes, I have become quite paranoid since my disaster back in March last year (why does it always have to happen around the 2x of the month?!). However, I still concerned, my hard drive could have failed and my data may not be recovery. All the multimedia is safely stored on a seperate drive, plus I make DVD backups on a regular process as well (you can never be too careful now, can you Pav?). Back to my point, deployed installation CDs are great for saving time and space and you can then build unattended setups, tailored just the way you like them. However they have a big drawback, which I did not discover until late last night. Many safety features are thrown overboard in the hunt to keep the size of that iso file down. This meant that I could not have the option to either access the Recovery Console or run a repair installation of the top (I had selected the option for a Full deployed installation only). I had a few options, and I sent out an SOS to Pav on MSN to explain the issue. He said I could pop over on Sunday and get a full version of the CD but I did not really want to use that option (even though it was good to have it there as a backup and fourth option). I cannot actually remember exactly what I did last night, three and half hours fly by when you are constantly looking for answers and trying to fix your personal computer. I have a Knoppix Live CD, plus the world famous Hiren Boot CD, but these were little help really. They proved my hard drive had not failed and that it was a corrupt file I needed to replace. Then I had to download a 7mb ISO file, burn the CD (what a waste, looking back with hindsight) boot up, get into the recovery console and then replace the file. I thought that would work but nope, it failed. I tried to repair the boot.ini file, using once again the recovery console. However, all this did was give me the boot option of not one but two Windows XP Professional systems (both of which did not work). So, around midnight thirty, I gave up and resigned myself to the fact that I would have to reinstall XP and then login, recover what I could and then completely wipe the drive and do a reinstall. In fact, a repeat of my adventure back in November 2006, when I decided that I could install Internet Explorer 7 upgrade on lazy quiet Monday evening. No. Naive. Fool. In any case, I was really disappointed on two counts, I had really wanted to watch Keri’s interview after her performance of Energy on BET 106 & Park and also tape highlights of Arsenal beating Bolton 3-1 at the Reebok. Nevermind, I would fix it (as always do with these things) before the weekend was out. When I woke up this morning, just after 7am, I thought it all had been a dream, until I gained full consciousness and realised I had to get out of bed and head to the gym. I was in the car by 7.33am (accidently calling someone at the top of my mobile book (sorry Alison!) but thankfully it went straight through to voicemail before I hungup! The gym was quiet, as I expected but for the first time I really did not want to be there, I just was not in the mood. Perhaps just because my Saturday evening had been ruined by technical error. However, things were startng to look up, I jumped on the bike, just in time to watch the highlights of West Ham versus Newcastle before seeing the Arsenal match. Perfect timing, I then completed my weights programme before heading home. Once I got home around 9.15am, I got the laptop out again and downloaded an image with Service Pack 3. My plan now was to do a quick install to access my drive under Windows, copy across anything I needed and then begin the rebuilding process. It was going to take just under two hours before the torrent was downloaded, so I left it running with a note to ensure my sister, Julie did not use the laptop. (It was unlikely as she would be asleep well after midday). I then, headed over to see my friend in Thame. It was nice to catch up in the sunshine while in one their patio. It was a pleasant way to spend the morning and a nice break away from the computer. At 1pm, I headed back home and got in just before the teams came out for the big crunch match. In a parrallel universe, I had planned to sit down and enjoy the match on television. It was not to be. I started the big process to rebuild my PC. I will not bore you with the process, but will instead, give you some images from my afternoon.