My empire for a Macintosh...

My computer lost its mind a few days ago. It cracked, unable to boot. I know a few things about computers, I do. For a layperson, anyway. So I know that when Windows doesn't boot properly, you can redirect it into something called Safe Mode where it boots only what it absolutely must - so you can get in, save your data, fix things, whatever. Actually, there are, like, 15 different kinds of Safe Mode. Some of which seem logical ("Debugging mode," that sounded good, or "Last Known Good") and some of which are quite mysterious. AND THEY ALL HUNG IN EXACTLY THE SAME PLACE.

So, I paid someone (thank you Charlie!!) to at least get my poor machine to the point where I could off-load all of my data. But it wasn't itself any more. It'd had a complete nervous breakdown, its mind was fractured. It would tell me "I can't open this software, it's damaged, you need to reinstall it," and then tell me "sorry, the installation failed." Whenever the screen-saver came on, I'd come back to two dialogue boxes asking me how I'd like to configure my mouse buttons, please? In its anxious state, my little laptop became fixated on those damn mouse buttons, like the computer version of obsessive-compulsive disorder. It was so sad.

So, I'm now reinstalling absolutely everything from Windows on up. Which, since the computer is two years old, includes 2+ years of patches, service packs, virus definitions, driver updates...I almost bought myself a new computer instead. In fact, I almost bought an iBook instead. But I really can't justify replacing every piece of software I own with the Macintosh version.

So now here I am, watching status bars creep across the screen...installing oobe.inf...installing ir41.dll...

And yeah, I'm starting a new consulting gig tomorrow. So this better work.