Getting ready to OSR my desktop...

[Vicious88]

Yes that's right, for the 4th time in 6 months, my computer will undergo an OSR (Operating System Re-install), where in I'll blow away my present copy of LastXP and put on a nice fresh copy of Windows XP.

And while I've been doing a lot of re-organization lately, this has nothing to do with un-seasonal spring cleaning -- this is due to me finally getting sick and tired of fighting with a worm I got from a bad game download a while back (*sigh*) which immediately killed off my copy of AVG and began infecting every single EXE and DLL file on my computer.

Seeing as we had just recovered from a bad hacking experience, I took no chances and used bitdefender to kill off the worm -- which, when it failed to heal my EXEs and DLLs -- it deleted all of them that weren't currently in use.

Don't know what EXEs and DLLs are?

Let me put it to you this way... If you had found yourself in my situation, you computer works. It starts up, and gets online... And at first, your problems seem small... "Oops - can't load youtube. Java EXEs must have been deleted -- I'll just re-install that."

But then you start noticing that every single thing you have, is failing to work. Most things you can simply re-download... But some things, like windows media player 11 on a NON-windows OS which refuses to validate as genuine, are not so simple to re-aquire.

And then you run into abstract things like Windows Media Encoder -- which isn't really required for normal day to day use -- but when you decide you want to go in and use your TV Tuner card, you'll find out that it's heavily required.

But yeah... Rather than go in and re-install all of the following programs/services/tools which have lost DLLs and EXEs, I'm just OSR'ing:

-MSPaint
-7ZIP
-WinRAR
-Regedit
-Command Prompt (which frankly, I don't even know HOW to re-install, I don't think it's possible personally)
-MySQL
-SQLyog
-World of Warcraft
-Morrowind
-Age of Empires 2
-GB-PVR
-Nero
-Alcohol 120%
-uTorrent
-Audacity
-Windows Media Player
-TuneUp Utilities 2009
---And much much much more...

Please note that I LOATHE having to OSR one of my own machines, so this comes as a sheer last resort and something that I'd rather not be preparing to do at 10:38 PM, but hey, whatever, right?

In any case -- If I'm not on infohub for a little while, it's because something has gone terribly terribly wrong, and I'll most likely end up updating this thread from the laptop or PS3.

I guess that's it...

Take care.

[Tom]

I still take full responsibility for this, since it was a link I found that led you to download the virus.

[ArthurDent]

Holy ****...

Having Morrowind down for even a moment is worthy of wide spread panic. I couldn't live without Morrowind on my computer ready to go at all times.

[Flozz]

thats why i run linux and windows linux almost never messes up.

i am currently running ubunto linux dual booted with windows vista which is broken (it seem you cannot update windows when its dual booted)

so for around the the last 3 months I have been running linux.

I have downloaded windows 7 and am thinking of installing that instead of vista i ahve tried it on a virtual machine and it seem pretty good.

also what is very annoying I dropped my external hard drive (well it fell of my table onto wooden flooring) and that all my data on because I backed everything up on my external hard drive before OSRing vista then installing linux.

so I have totally lost my hard drive for now.

[ArthurDent]

You people confuse me with your talk of Com-Pute-orz.

[Vicious88]

As an update to this, my OSR would have been done by now, if it weren't for the a series of unforunate events...

For beginers, even after I cleared most everything off of my harddriver, 7ZIP claimed there simply wasn't enough space for me to compress my Adobe CS4 stuff into a small enough archive in order to fit it onto a double layered DVD. (Apparently you need about 20GB of disk space free in order for 7ZIP to compress 14GB into 5GB. Makes no sense to me, but whatever.)

So I ended up having to loose all my CS4 stuff...

Then I couldn't find my XP CDs - which is odd cause I have like 7... So I figured I'd look for my LastXP Version 22 DVD -- which is also missing - so I'm having to downgrade from 22 to 16 now. Which, to say the least is a bit upsetting.

Then there's the fact that my motherboard was made from two dead motherboards of slightly different models - so things like my on-board sound are NEVER going to work. And LastXP tries really hard, to install that driver. Causing a BSOD during setup...

[Vicious88]

Double posting because the PS3's Character Limit had been reached...

So I ended up having to try my LastXP OSR twice -- because the first time I was getting some cereal from the kitchen and failed to uncheck the "install sound drivers" box before the AFK Timer kicked in and assumed I wanted everything to run by the otherwise blissful default options. I say otherwise blissful, because on any computer not using a more-or-less homemade motherboard, it'll save you a LOT of driver hunting.

So yeah... Fun, fun, fun.

Flozz: Dual boots shouldn't affect a computers ability to update it's windows. That's assuming of course that each Operating System is installed to its own partition or harddrive, and that your boot.ini files in your C:\ is configured correctly.

[Flozz]

its a common problem i just think it is microsoft being evil if goes halfway through the installations then stops because you have altered boot up files.
and it is all properly dual booted on separate partitions
http://apcmag.com/vista_sp1_wont_install_on_dualboot_systems_microso ft.htm

i could really make a list of all the reason why I hate Microsoft

[Vicious88]

Well I've got to tell you, Flozz, I've never run into any problems like that on my daul-boot systems.


To Anyone: I'm looking for some good PVR / TV Tuner Card Software that works with an ATI Theatre 550 Pro Tuner (PCI)... If you know of any good ones, suggestions would be appreciated.

[Flozz]

Im not sure if this is what you mean but i used "windows media centre" i have some cheap tuner. might work?

[Vicious88]

I've got the tuner - what I need is some software but don't really feel like fooling with Media Centre. For the moment, I've settled with BeyondTV but I'm not overwhelmingly happy with it.