Flaky, Part 2
My system's gone flaky again, so my ability to access e-mail may be limited.I rebooted last night (because, for some reason, I was getting blank pages when I browsed, even though the Internet connection wasn't down). Then, at the black screen that says "Windows XP" and shows you the little blue loading bar, it just got stuck in an infinite loop. It would show the little blue bar completing three or four times (at which point, I usually progress to the logon screen), but this time the blue bar kept filling up again and again. Occasionally, it would stop for ten seconds, then it would start filling up again.
I tried rebooting with the last known successful configuration--no change. Tried booting into safe mode--wouldn't complete. Tried unplugging the system for a few minutes--no change.
Great. Fortunately, I've learned a few things since last time. First off, I used Spinrite right away and verified that the drive is fine--no unrecoverable sectors, no errors. And I've been defragging the drive every 3-4 days.
I decided to try to boot to a USB-CD drive and run the XP recovery console from there. So I did, but when I hit "R" to bring up the recovery console, it told me there were no files installed on the hard drive. Hmm.
So, in a fit of technical genius, I rebooted, and for some reason, instead of booting to the XP CD, when I walk back into the room (about five minutes later) I'm at the Windows logon screen.
Needless to say, I'm not real confident about how long this will last. So like I said, I may not be up for very long today. However, if you recognize this, please send me an e-mail. I haven't tried System Restore yet, but if that's a viable option for flakiness like this, I do have restores from almost a week ago that could be used.
By the way, I'm playing a game right now that, after five hours, would have to qualify in my all-inclusive, two-decade Top Ten. And you're going to find out what it is either later today or early tomorrow.
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