I love it when things work out.
My friend Keith, the jeweler, hosed his Windows XP installation last week. I went over to help him, thinking it would be something simple and I could boot into Safe Mode, fix it, and look brilliant. No such luck. It just would not boot.
With time running short, I had to leave, but promised I would come by this weekend to help him back up his files. He was getting the restore disks from the friend who gave him the computer, but my concern was that he would lose his files (including his website) in the restore process. My plan was to take a Ubuntu Live CD disk over -- the operating system runs right off the CD instead of the hard drive -- and back up his files to an external hard drive for safekeeping. Keith, understandably, wanted to be able to check his e-mail. I held out a small hope that he'd be able to do that, but my understanding of Verizon DSL was that it might be problematic.
The Live CD worked, and remarkably, Keith was able to go online. This was a great solution to his problem -- he could check his e-mail, etc., until he was able to restore his Windows installation. At this point, I was completely prepared to declare victory and move on.
I decided Keith should have a demonstration how to use the Live CD, though. Keith is very intelligent, but he learns better by doing than by watching. So I sat him down and had him start the computer. Then I stopped him -- Windows had starting running CHKDSK. It hadn't done that before. As we watched, me in open-mouthed amazement, the login screen came up and the computer worked as before.
I couldn't take credit. I still don't know what was different about this particular boot cycle. Nonetheless, it worked.
So I'm considering this as my miracle CD, and I'll be making additional copies for future use.
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So windows will occasionally hose itself by writing a bad value to memory (like, one bit in the ram will randomly be set to the wrong value) which can prevent windows from loading properly. This happened to my coworker a couple of months ago, and when, Ken, out IT guy fixed it, he explained it to me.
ReplyDeleteWhat the Unbuntu Live CD does, among other things, when you load it up, is go through all the memory and make sure it's clean so it can use itself. This has the added side effect that, once you quit out of the live CD, Windows can start fresh and will be able to boot without that bad value being in the way.
So not only is the Live CD great for backing up files and diagnosing all those other pesky problems that Windows can have, but at the same time it automatically can fix problems like this that there's really no other good way of fixing.
Brandon--
ReplyDeleteThank you for that coherent explanation. I had a feeling it was something like that, but my liberal-arts education didn't equip me to do anything other than gaze in wonder at it working. :-)
Part of me really wishes I didn't happen to know these sorts of things. On the other hand, the part of me that wishes to remain employed is quite glad I know these sorts of things. ;-)
ReplyDeleteStill, I tend to gaze in wonder every time Windows boots without issue. I think it's a habit from running Windows ME for too many years...