Spent the last three days recovering DW's crashed computer. Only an hour ago put her computer back in her office.
Dell with XP. It died with the blue screen of death after a Microshaft automatic update overnight. The Dreaded, STOP: 0X0000050. (0X5500000 etc.) Micorsoft help site talked about memory, L2 cashe, printers scanners, drivers etc. All af it bunk. Machine ran fine with another dirive configured for XP.
No amount of attempts could get it going, safe mode or rescue console, or any of the cheater NTFS boot disks. Or re-installation, it alwas died with the BSOD. Ran chesckdisk, showd no file system oor disk errors. Ran Avast virus checker from CD, no viruses found.
Naturally, no backup of files and photos, which she considered "priceless".
The fix ended up, dig up a spare hard drive from my scrap heap, It was only 2GB, but enough. Did you know XP uses about 1.6 GB? Install XP on said drive, bring XP up to current service pack 3 plus 60+ updates to it, to be sure there was no video card related issues. Then attach her old drive as a slave, find and copy off all her files to a thumb drive, and burn a CD for good measure. Wipe old drive. Re-install XP bring this up to Service pack 3 and by now 75 updates to it.
Interestingly on final scan for updates Microsoft had an updated video driver for her machine.
Tried using the Vizard for settings and files, was a dismal failure. So copy all stuff now saved onto reconstructed drive. Re-do settings, email setups etc.
So now I'm realatively familiar with XP. My machines still run Win2K pro.
She did offer a very nice dinner out at some fancy eatery.