Arrggghhhh.. what a monstrous flow-chart of repetitive drudgery, just to barely-repair. What a primitive level all this committee-programmed crap is stuck in -- I Hates it! Is this month some more country-wide punishment for selecting BushCo -- when there was that chance to dump the sucker?

My share of whatever's going around - (eMachine surfer)
Went yesterday to back-up mail, docs etc, after sanitizing, compressing folders.
Errors.. about 9/10s through the copying.

3 coasters later (even trashing my lone CD/RW disc, tried) -- either the Samsung CD-R/W SW-408B died or Roxio 5 has eaten-self in such a way that it throws no intelligible 'missing __' type clues. Canned-air spray inside for easter-egg dust mote on laser? No dice. Diag format checker --> limbo, too, at about same 9/10s. Conclude: bad/dirty worm gear laser-mover maybe. Refuse to excavate. Done that - it now no fun.

At least copied from C: --> D: partitions; no help if HD expires, of course.
{sigh} IIRC Roxio periodically upgrades tables for new model arrivals, but usually forces an upgrade to get them. So would be best to find a 3-5 yo CDRW someone upgraded, for 110x or whatever. (This one is 8-8-32x. I no hurry.) There's always the Cpq to schlep the HD over to, for a copy. Or any Apple, next door.

Yeah, silly to patch up a 7 yo P-III, but I'm after that Guinness prize.
Condolences on your much more complexificated Billyware setup. I only wasted one day, but it seemed like a week.

(I hope to skip from 9.x to an appropriate 1-2 yo Apple and Never have to hit 10 sites just to get the list of mods to make XP semi-utile ... as tried by my neighbor a couple years back. Weeks of tweaky BS.)


So then: is it Bush, or Us? pissing off Cthulhu's Technical-tentacle this month?


PS - on this highly-forgetful s/ware, where Back<-- will erase composed text instantly - I note that, if you save partway through: you Can then move about; before first save: you lose.
(Not the case on old Zope ... created bad habits.)

Have an offer of a disused hP DVD-R/W, model DVD200i, ca '03 vintage -- but the web-mind has mixed reviews, most converging on:

those cheap %^#$&-tards at hP want $ + snail-mail-only s-l-o-w delivery of even -- drivers!
(as I also found out, re Carly's boutique-HP: when simply seeking drivers to convert the hP nb --> 9.x, the OS it came out with. Then, you had to go through A Technician™ @ $40ish a pop IIRC -- to get Anything. In past: these were on the site for the d/l-ing; then they got greedier. Screw hP.)

Saw the imgburn ap, may give it a go; alas, Peter's selection ends in the ominous -'XP', making it a noncontender (on a 600 MHz, even if I didn't already despise its malware-magnetic attractors and complexified-bloat.)

Will have to put self in a lowered-consciousness state in order to move on to the autopsies; for next while, think I'll just let the sucker marinate, maybe take a look at the drive-screw / laser window.. Sometimes ya gets lucky.