It’s a Windows XP reinstall day.
How did I get here?
Well, all I did was:
- Install a new hard drive, partitioned it, formatted the partition.
- Copied everything off the D partition of my original hard drive to the new hard drive
- Used Norton PartitionMagic 8.0 to mark the D partition for deletion
- Applied the delete operation
- Rebooted
- The partition delete went ok
- The computer reboots again
- The computer reports that it cannot find NTLDR
And so the oh shit moment creeps in upon me.
I thought that I was doing what a colleague of mine had done a few weeks before. However, he only used PM to extend his C partition after he had deleted his D partition from within Windows XP.
I tried a few tricks but clearly I am not clever enough, so I ended up with a hosed partition table and no booting into windows. I tried recovering with the Windows XP install disk but it was a disaster.
Anyway there is something nice about a clean install. At least all my downloads were safe on my new drive!
One of the wonderful things about having to do an install, and thereby, losing productivity on your work day is that it allows you to spend time reading at work. In my case it’s Eric Evans Domain Driven Design: Tacking Complexity in the Heart of Software. I started in on it some time ago but I have not been giving it the attention it deserves. It has been relaxing taking the time out today to sit down and read something of substance in between the CD shuffling.
It seems so hard in this day of an always-on appliance on your desk to actually take time out to read something properly. I reckon I must have N.A.D.D. The best thing I can do when trying to understand anything deeply is to print it off, and then read it away from a computer screen.
Ah well, the Visual C++ Installer is calling now, must go!
Gordon Down Under 