Solo Technology

My work laptop has been unstable lately. Nothing too weird, but once a day or so it just locks up. Hard. No crash. Nothing in the event viewer. ctrl-alt-delete does nothing. Just locks up and the only cure is a complete power cycle.

Annoying.

I use this thing pretty hard and somewhat (digitally) abusively. Lots of experimenting with software, etc. And I use it a lot. It’s not quite two years old and already on the second keyboard. First one had some keys literally fall off — and a lot of the letters were worn away. Seriously, I get my money’s worth!

So I decided it was time to backup, format and reload. Only load what I need. Should be a piece of cake right? After dithering around on and off all day, I finally decided it was properly backed up. I know, in the back of my mind, I forgot something… I just can’t figure out what. And that is driving me nuts.

Writing this while it formats. Lord help me, I sure hope I backed it all up!

My list of stuff to install is entirely too big. But most of it is used daily or very freqently.

Curious? Here’s the checklist:

• XP Pro / Service Packs and Patches
• .NET frameworks (1 and 2)
• Toshiba util drivers
• Firefox and Plugins (which plugins are currently important to me? Topic for a future article)
• Opera
• Visual Source Safe
• Visual Studio 2005
• Microsoft SQL Server 2005
• Service Packs for VS 2k5 and SQL 2k5
• Paint.Net
• Notepad+
• Launchy (in process of switching from RocketDock [maybe])
• MS Office Apps
  • Outlook 2003
    • Lookout
    • SpamBayes
  • Office Standard 2k3
  • Access 2003
  • Visio 2003
  • MS Project 2002
  • OneNote 2003
• Service Packs / Patches for the office stuff
• Microsoft Defender
• Symantec Antivirus (corp) — too old to find our version at Symantec site…
• Acrobat Reader
• TrueCrypt
• Zune XP Theme
• Windows Media Player 11
• Last.FM wmp plugin
• 7-zip
• UltraVNC

And ya know? I’m still forgetting stuff. I just know it. And omg, but what might I have forgotten to backup? Guess I’ll figure that out next week.

Suspect this will keep me busy this weekend.

3 Responses to “Nerve-racking”

1. Rich G. on January 27th, 2007 12:02 pm
   

   I know this is a silly question, but Opera works OK for you on gmail? I would get crashes, only on gmail about 1 out of every 3rd time I went there on a clean install on my new laptop. Gmail worked fine in firefox and IE, just wouldn’t work on Opera all the time. Finally removed it. If I can’t gmail I can’t be bothered lol.

2. Chris on January 27th, 2007 2:45 pm
   

   I have never had an issue with Gmail and Opera.

   I’ve had other issues with it (meebo, for instance), but not Gmail.

3. » pingback » Nerve-racking to Maddening » Solo Technology on January 29th, 2007 5:51 pm
   
   

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