Computer! Down!

Arrrrgggghhhhh!

It probably just needs an XP reinstall. Windows had some sort of nervous breakdown after I tried to update it. I hope it's not hardware.

I plan to spend tonight alternately petting and kicking my computer. I obviously won't be posting any pictures until my scanner is hooked up to something that works. I hope I don't have to resort to hooking it up to the laptop.

* * *

As of 10:53 tonight, the score stands at Broken Computer: 1, Princess Rockstar Scientist: 0. I tried repairing the update. The repair hung. I polled my friends for ideas. They said "don't bother repairing, just do a fresh install." I worried about whether it was my hard drive that was the problem.

Neil said "hey, don't you have a new hard drive hanging around somewhere?" I said "I do?" (This is more or less just like the last time I had to upgrade my OS. I had a 30 Gig hard drive hanging around. It was in my sock drawer. I am not making this up.) So, yeah. There was another hard drive I'd completely forgotten about. We put it into the patient. I loaded a fresh, clean install of XP on it. I logged in. There was no Internet.

There is no driver for the network card installed. Well played, Mr. Computer; well-played. I dragged the motherboard driver disk out of the software drawer, and started installing drivers.

The install hung.

So the question that I am asking myself is... is it my motherboard, or just a coincidence with a bad CD? Do I feel lucky, punk? Well? Do I?