Brain Dead
So yesterday afternoon at work my PC just sort of had a stroke. Of course, this happens right when Jen Simonds is on the phone asking me to do something, and the computer just locks up. Tight. So tight that the Task Manager is inaccessible; Ctrl-Alt-Delete does nothing at all. And of course, on a modern computer the power switch doesn't work when the machine locks up, because it's not really a power switch at all, but a momentary-contact switch that routes power to some semiconductor on the motherboard that tells the computer that it's time to shut down.Anyway, I was stuck. Jen's on the phone with something important I have to take care of before I leave on my two-day vacation that should have started an hour earlier, and I can't take care of anything because my computer's vacation did start. So I did what any sensible person would do. I pulled the plug, counted to five, plugged it back in, and hit the power button. The Windows 2000 boot menu comes up, I tell it to proceed with the normal configuration, and then ... evilness. A complaint that some essential operating system file can't be found, and a suggestion that maybe I want to boot from the recovery disk that I don't have because they don't trust computer professionals with things like that. So now I have to call the help line and wait for a desktop support guy. Which I do. The support guy shows up, calmly assesses the problem, and reveals that he didn't bring the recovery disk with him. But no problem; he's just going to boot to a command prompt and run CHKDSK with the repair option while he goes to get it. So he does, and wanders away.
So now I'm sitting cube-bound, waiting for CHKDSK to finish. But you know what? CHKDSK is unbelievably slow. Before he left it had zoomed up to 24%, but then it slowed to a crawl, only doing another 3% before he returns with the recovery disk. He looks at the 27% indicator and says, "Well, I can't stop it now; we'll just have to let it run." Crap.
So this morning -- on my vacation day -- I got up and went to work to see what he'd accomplished. Still no boot. But voicemail from the support guy, who says he's going to have to mirror my data and rebuild the OS. Great. Great great great. How do I explain to the support guy that 45 people, including my manager and a director, are depending on me to have the friggin' football pool up and running?!
Long story short, 24 hours later it's still not fixed, and Support Guy isn't promising me any particular time that he's going to have it done tomorrow. If he even will.
Sigh.
posted by MeanMrMustard @ 3:34 PM
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