Dead Computer

Crap! Crap! Crap!

It looks like my Sony Vaio is stuck in an infinite reboot loop, complete with a STOP: C0000218 BSOD (Blue Screen of Death). Since I didn't get a Vista CD with the computer, I'm not sure how I can repair this. The best I can do is some built-in Sony recovery software. I may have to copy off my personal files and restore the entire system.

I.HATE.WINDOWS

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I just started backing up ~40GB of stuff from my Sony to an external HDD. The remaining time estimate keeps flipping around but it looks like 30 minutes. Then it will probably take me hours and hours to restore, update Vista, and reinstall all my software.

Crap!

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Well, I copied off all my files and restored the computer to when I bought it. There is a hidden 9GB partition that has Windows Vista and other pre-installed software. The only difference is that I split the remaining 224GB into two 112GB partitions so if this happens again, I only need to wipe the C: partition and leave all my personal files alone.

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[4/30/10 - 3:26 PM]

Evidently part of the Windows Vista install is to have the computer sit there on the same screen, without any status updates, for >30 minutes. Since my computer screwed up, I was unsure if a full restore was going to work. After aborting the process a few times, I let it do a full restore overnight. I guess I was interrupting it too soon since Vista installer finished when I woke this morning; however, I'm back to only one 224GB partition. Oh well...

I then spent an hour removing bloatware from the computer. I needed to uninstall trial versions of Norton 360, Microsoft Works, academic version of Office, and a whole bunch of things. When I left the house this morning, the computer was in the middle of installing 80+ updates.