so, seconds after i finished my last post to this blog, the computer shut off and the os wouldn't boot. what to say about that, exactly?

in the past, what's often happened is that the machine gets stuck at this stupid prompt that says "your machine didn't shut down properly last time". all you actually have to do is press enter, but i can't see that because i don't get any video until it's done booting. so, all i have to do is boot it into the music pc, shut it down properly and reboot the laptop. right now, it won't boot into the music pc, either. 

i'm running a chkdsk.....

i don't keep anything of value on the install partition, so i should be able to wipe it if i have to. and, i have several extra laptop hard drives kicking around. this won't set me back more than a few days, max.

but, it looks like i'm going to lose the night, and maybe a day or two. 

so, i'm posting from the stupid chromebook, that i actually hate because the software is terrible. i'm never going to want to use this shitty google freeware for anything. and, i don't even want to log into the thing, i'm just using it as a guest. it's better than a phone, at least.

if the chkdsk fixes the problem, i'll be back up in a few hours. if not, i'll have to launch it as an external from an xp install, clear the data off, format it and put it back on.

why is this happening, though?

well, the drive is indeed a little bit old.

but, i actually suspect that windows thinks i'm pirating the software - and i'm not. it might have shut itself off. i have a lot of corporate volume licenses of old software, and a lot of stuff i got for free from school, but i don't actually use pirated windows software.

i could switch to linux if you really want, though, bill - if you really want to get stupid about it. i mean, those are the choices. i'm not buying a vista key for a 15 year old laptop that was designed for vista and can barely even run 7 at all. if microsoft insists on shutting me down, i'm not buying a new key (i have a key!) and i'm not buying a new laptop, either. i'm going to linux.

that's not paranoid - they will actually shut you down. but, they're wrong, here. i just don't have the resources to run their "genuine checker" all of the time and turn it off when i'm not using it - because it's an old machine, and every cycle is worth saving. yet, every time they prompt me, i just turn the service on and that's that.

i don't know that that's actually the case, for sure. it might just be an old drive. and, it's a pretty old drive, too.

whatever. let's hope the chkdsk works and go from there...