j's scratchpad

Wow. I really did just stay up all night fixing my laptop. It was kinda doing that thing it did in May when it wouldn’t boot coupled with a weird snorting sound. (If carcophony is the noise people make to explain their car sounds, what’s the word for someone making computer noises?)

Too scared to try to reinstall the OS, I left it trying to boot for about twenty minutes while I read some more of a Chinese murder mystery. To my surprise, it slowly came to life. I quickly hopped online to make sure the urgent e-mail I was sending when it initially crashed actually sent. It hadn’t, of course, so I tried sending it again–this time with success (*j wipes nervous perspiration off brow) just before the machine crashed again. While it was rebooting, I made a list of programs I use regularly and files and folders I needed to copy, if possible.

I was preparing emotionally to have to do to it what some friends did in June to get it working again, knowing I would probably have to wait until I could procure the proper equipment to do so. I got lucky. The machine booted a second time. I was able to copy key files to a Zip disk and am working on burning some backup CDs now. At some point while playing with the first CD, I realized the funny snorting noise stopped.

What’s on my machine? (Most of this software did not come bundled with the operating system.)

• At least 7 different Web browsers; 5 of which are in my dock and are used regularly

• 5 chat/instant messaging/IRC clients
• 5 programs to deal with audio/video files
• 4 graphics programs
• 3 aggregators, not including iTunes’ podcast-gathering abilities
• 2 FTP clients
• Oddly enough: only 1 e-mail client and only 1 Web page editor
• Various browser plug-ins
• A typical suite of software including a word processor, presentation stuff, and a spreadsheet
• Speech recognition software++

What files/folders get priority for backups?

• e-mail

• chat/IM logs
• images
• blogging stuff
• Web work
• correspondence
• writing
• presentations
• professional development/committee/blog group stuff
• lots o’ other stuff

Several really good things came out of this exercise:

• I now have a list of all the software on my machine. I only had a partial list before. And the list is on paper, not on my computer.

• I also have a list of what gets moved first, so when I’m in a panic, I don’t have to worry about forgetting something vital–unless it isn’t on the list.
• I’ve now done my six-month backup. (Backups are so much easier when they’re done regularly. It took me about half as long and required 2 CDs instead of 5.)
• I know I really need to make one list of all the software registration keys. If I ever have to rebuild my machine from scratch again, that will save lots of time. And I should print a copy of the list.
• I cleaned out and reorganized some crap, so my machine is a bit neater now.
• I’m glad I still don’t own a digital camera. I can’t imagine moving all the photos around if something like this happened. All the more reason to be very cautious if/when I get such a gadget.

Addendum 2/4: I happened to be on the phone with a friend quite knowledgeable about computers when my laptop started acting up again. After describing the problems, he suggested that the hard drive might be failing. If I myseriously stop blogging for a while, you’ll know that’s probably the case.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 1st, 2006 at 4:45 am and is filed under Computers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.