I guess it all started around 7 AM Wednesday morning when I woke up. I noticed Windows 2000 was reporting errors about not being able to write to certain portions of my hard drive. I ignored it at that time because sometimes my laptop does quirky things, and I was pretty busy with class and stuff. However by the time I had time to deal with it (haha… while I was in Human Sexuality class supposed to be paying attention!) I couldn’t get my laptop to boot. The \winnt\system32\drivers folder was completely corrupted.
After some time trying to restore the directory, and even trying to do an alternate install on my second partition, I gave up and booted from my trusty Linux boot CD to start data recovery. A painful 36 hours later (by Friday night at 3 AM) I had recovered all of my data that I needed (by tar’ing as much as could fit in the RAM drive and ftp’ing it to my desktop computer – trust me, it was VERY painful but totally worth it to have my data!).
Now that the data is off of the drive, I have been able to try formatting and running disk diagnostics that would have otherwise destroyed the data. It would seem that I do indeed have a physically bad drive. In fact, while I was running the Department of Defense’s 7-pass format (0-write) utility, the output rate got slower and slower until it finally stopped. I believe the head finally gave out. I’m not sure, but now I cannot run any formatting utilities :-O
So anyway, I actually got to witness the physical death of my hard drive. *Sigh* it’s back to Rensselaer Computer Repair (RCR) on Monday to see if I can get a new hard drive. This will be the 6th time I’ve had them fix my laptop. It’s not that I’m hard on it, the laptop of my year just sucks. I mean, ‘s LCD just gave out. My LCD also needs to be replaced, it just developed a dead row of pixels a few weeks ago… Here’s a list of the other things I’ve had replaced:
- New motherboard (the modem didn’t work, but since it’s integrated they replaced the motherboard)
- New “bezel” (the front part of the case – it was cracked)
- New keyboard mounting
- New LCD (row of dead pixels formed)
- New bezel, again
And now a new hard drive and another LCD. Again, I swear I’m not abusive towards my laptop! I haven’t put any stickers on it, I treat it with care at all times 
I’ve been told that they keep hard drives in stock, and they should be able to swap a new one in after they run some tests on it. Also, they don’t carry the 30 GB hard drives any more (which is what I have) they only have 45 GB. So I’ll actually get an upgrade Yay for upgrades!!
-
Ah well, you’re getting a T-40 in a few short weeks. Right? Before I get mine too
. -
This is true, and it couldn’t come soon enough! I feel so left out at RPI without my laptop. I was walking around the Union today, and I feel completely lost without a laptop
But I believe I get my laptop maybe a day before you get yours. But I think they arrive at RPI way before that. It takes them a month to get them all imaged. I don’t need mine imaged, I would take it totally blank if I could get it tomorrow! LOL
-
I feel very strange without my watch …
No … you get way more than a day. I think you can get yours on the 18th. We get ours on the 22nd or the 24th (we don’t know which until our RA tells us and Marie! doesn’t have the schedule yet). They withold it for the first couple days of NRB because they don’t want students to take their laptops and not be seen again until classes start. Now … I wonder what ever would give them that idea. ……..
-
You can just sneak your way into the first group of freshmen that go to get the laptops. There is no method in place to check if you are supposed to get your laptop on the first day or the third day of distribution
-
Well, my friend is the one that told me we can start picking up ours on the 18th so I don’t know for sure how true that is.
I can’t wait to get a new one!
YAYYYYYY for LEEEE and taking my laptop in for me. At least it didn’t completely die like I thought it did. I wanna throw it out the window.
Comments are now closed.
5 comments