Getting one's priorities straight!!!

I got a great lesson on how reliant we have become on these darned computers. In attempting to upgrade my computer, I killed it! Fortunately, not the hard drive... It was a software issue. I located E-Machines recovery cd's, but they would not load... Little known to me they would boot the machine in either drive (I have two), but would need to be in a particular drive to load. I thought: Why doesent it start loading, when it booted???

Desperate to recover my pictures and other stuff, I went out and purchased a new Win XP cd for $200 plus tax. I also bought an 80 gig hard drive, used, at a computer store. I did NOT want to wipe out my files when loading Win XP. I put that drive in as the boot drive so I could then copy files from the other drive (slave).

It acted like it was loading, but would stop with an error message after about 45 minutes. I had swapped out the ram (having the old ram saved from the upgrade) and part of this time the machine was on it's side. I thought those cd drives could read in any position and it acted like it would. Finally, I examined the cd and to my horror I saw it was scratched along the outer edge. Yikes! Desperate, I ran out and purchased a cd scratch remover kit. But, alas, the liquid and the buffing cloth were missing! So I tried some Walmart glasses cleaning solution and my micro fiber cloth. It seemed to work, but the first time was a no-go. So I loaded the cd in the wheel and cranked the scratch removing machine like hell. This seemed to polish it deeper and removed more scratches.

Alas, Win XP loaded. But alas, my sound card and, more importantly, my eithernet card were not found on the system. Again, I thought I'd try the E-machines disks. This time I put 'em in the right drive! This was loaded onto the used hard drive I had purchased. I didn't want to load Windows onto my old drive as it had my data. Next, I just happened to put in the E-machines recovery cd to see if it would load. And I just happened to put that cd in the right drive! Alas, it worked and upon loading the machine played music, indicating it found the sound card. Later, after the lengthy load, the machine connected to the internet. I was almost home free!!!

It took a while to get into the folders on the other (secondary) drive. I had to boot in Safe Mode to make changes so it would let me access them. Then the rest was just a lot of reloading. Unfortunately, I lost all my e-mails as Windows wipes that out when it loads. But NOT the e-mails on Yahoo, where my friend in Iran writes to. Obviously that one is Web-based. I also got all my pictures and was able to recover Yahoo messenger chat archive (I want to keep EVERYTHING that me and my friend talk about). Oh well, I had saved too many darned e-mails anyway. At least I still have all the e-mail addresses as those are loaded onto my web based e-mail system. All the Word docs and pdf's and everything else survived in My Documents.

What would I do without the computer - or more importantly the Internet??? Of course, I could always go to the library or access my stuff at work. What will we do if the Internet crashes altogether??? Best to start reorganizing my paper filing system - I should also keep a phone book handy! Next, I need to stash some cash for emergencies. Then PRINT OUT all the important pictures and back them up on cd/dvd. An extra computer (laptop) would come in handy as well! I'm pleased that the really important stuff survived!