OK Computer

My Sony Vaio died two weeks ago. It was a slow process, and I was able to try some fixes (in no particular order):

• fdisk /mbr
  
• scandisk
  
• Maxtor PowerMax utility, which consistently said everything was fine
  
• replacing the CPU fan
  
• Running Norton Antivirus on the hard drive, from a CD-ROM

Nothing worked; rather, the problems got progressively worse until the hard drive finally joined the choir invisible. I could have bought a new hard drive to see if that was truly the only problem, but I decided to spring for a new PC. I bought the Vaio six years ago; it was running Win 98, and it was getting a bit dated, although it generally served my purposes well for home use until it died. I may still try to replace the hard drive and see if it can be revived.

I got my new machine, a Dell, on Friday. It's OK. I'm slowly getting my old software installed: Firefox, AT&T Worldnet software, MS Office, MS Money...

The new machine came with a get-six-months-free offer from Earthlink, so I decided to try it. It kind of sucks - their toolbar seems to be screwing with Microsoft's Data Execution Protection (DEP), which causes the system to hang unpredictably. I think it's their toolbar, I'm not completely sure; DEP seems to be messing with a number of applications (which makes me miss Win 98). In comparison, my old AT&T Worldnet service seems to be performing without a glitch, so I'll probably drop Earthlink soon.

I'm incredibly lucky in having backed up most of the stuff on my old hard drive just one week before it died! Am I psychic?! As I'm starting afresh, I've realized that I missed a few things: my browser bookmarks and history, and stuff I'd been keeping on the Desktop. I wonder what else got left behind?