Oh wasn't I pleased to discover that the failed disc was from that batch of flakey drives that Fujitsu rolled out about two years ago. I'm suprised the damn thing has lasted this long. Despite being one of the faulty models, they wouldn't replace it until it went wrong. Now they won't replace it because it is (just) out of warranty.
Fortunately, I managed to do a full system backup using the Windows XP "Automatic System Recovery" feature. Dumped a huge backup file onto my laptop over the network.
Well the fun started when I tried to restore the data to the new Seagate drive. In order to reboot a system with this magic ASR feature, you need to have the original XP cdrom. Could I find the damn thing? windows 2000, 98, 95 (!), no problem, but no sign of the XP Cdrom (I did have one before you start casting aspersions.
Fortunately I rumaged aroud and found my time limited copy of winxp beta! Onwards to installing the system. Seems otherwise, looks like the computer has decided that it no longer wants to recognise any of the function keys on the keyboard. Try another keyboard.. ah it doesn't like the delete key either!
Funny, they work on one of the other computers. Ah well, rummaged around for another keyboard, and third time lucky, it worked!
Then we get the issue that this ASR backup/recover utility is unable to see any network shares (and therefore the backup file on my laptop).
Now realise that at this point that the only program up on the screen is this backup program, there is no taskbar, no start menu or anything like that.
Start to foam at the mouth, but then discover you can bring up a command console with the shift-f10 key combination. Bingo!
Ah, but a ipconfig/all shows that there is no network card configured. Bugger around in c:\windows and try and work out how to start up the install new hardware control panel. (it's c:\windows\system32\control.exe newwiz.cpl or something like that).
Oh, it cannot find any drivers. Is the network card accessible to see what type it is? Oh how helpful, no part number. Only that it is an SMC network card.
Download numerous winxp drivers for (it seems) the entire SMC 100Mbit ethernet card range (on another computer) and watch the system reject them out of hand one by one. Finally it finds the right one, a 1255TX it would seem. Windows XP however refuses to start the ethernet card up though.
Attempt a reboot in the vain hope this will achieve something.
It does! It recognised the card, and has assigned an address! Bugger around in the command shell again with net use commands and manage to remap the network share as Z:\ and backup can finally see the backup file it wants to restore.
Only 2 1/2 hours to go...
Yuk, windows. Get a mac, Douglas - I am a convert. Come join us....
Tell me about it. My family has a long history of using mac's. My first was a Mac SE (or some such similar thing) about 12 years ago. My father refuses to use anything other than apple.
OS X looks very good, and I am certainly considering using it on a powerbook when it comes to getting another laptop.
I run freebsd as a matter of course on my systems, but I do have to use XP to run some work related applications.
The system with the faulty disk belongs to my wife, and she quite likes windows. No accounting for taste :)
Ah, my wife is reluctant to move away from windows as well. Strangely, my mother-in-law really likes the mac OS and recently asked me some almost sensible questions about OS X.