So I’m sitting here, checking my emails in Thunderbird. To add flavor to the already yummy life, my computer decided to end its own life. I started hearing a continuous beeping sound while I read an email. After about 10 second, the computer turned off. Afterwards, I was only able to see either a blank screen or the blue screen of death on multiple reboots. Windows would not load. Windows would not let me see anything. That was weird.

I tried a few things, including the safe mode recovery system as suggested by Valerie. It didn’t help. I tried restoring the system using the system recovery CD set that came with the computer. As luck would have it, the system restore cd itself was corrupted. My computer was royally screwed. I tried in vain for a whole day to get the computer working. The computer just didn’t want to act normal anymore.

I went to a Fry’s store in a neighboring city later that evening, looking for Windows XP Professional edition. It carried a price tag of “only” $299, plus tax, while a brand new Compaq computer near that same aisle was $349 and came with XP already installed. Spending hundreds of dollars on XP seemed like a waste of valuable funds. I could have spent that much money on buying a gift for someone, or buying a new camera. Heck, I could use that money to buy a round trip ticket. But spending more than $300 on an XP cd didn’t seem like a good choice. I decided to wait a little bit more and look for alternatives. I still had the original license key for Windows XP that I got when I bought my computer. However, since the recovery cds were screwed, my computer was screwed also. It was a screwy day. For some reason I didn’t feel screwed, just not yet.

Well, I decided to ask someone if they had the Window XP non-upgrade cd. With a non-upgrade edition, one can install the operating system regardless of the working order or nature of the already existing operating system. The upgrade edition requires a working copy of Windows to be on the computer, thus I had to look for a non-upgrade cd. It seems that everyone has the Windows XP upgrade edition cd lying around. Finally, the Yellow Doctor lent me his Windows XP non-upgrade edition cd. Thank you! Now the computer is working fine, and things seem to be going back to normal for this already screwed system. Good thing I didn’t lose any information along the way. The loss of 15,000+ pictures and several gigabytes of songs may have really screwed me for a while.

Time to upload those pictures online to flickr.