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I have finally given up trying to reinstall windows on the previous hard drive. Everytime it would get to the Windows installation it would always stall once it hit the spot were there was approximately 13 minutes remaining. This was the portion where it said it was registering components. I left my computer on all day while at work to see if it was just being a bit sluggish, but when I came back it was at the same point. The was the third time in a row after a complete erasure of the drive that it would stall at this point in the reinstallation.

After talking with a few people who know more about computers than I do, we decided that it was some sort of hard drive malfunction. Great. I went to a store called Computer Stop in north Seattle and picked up an 80 GB Seagate hard drive for $50. I came home and took out the defective hard drive and installed the new one. Now I am in the process of once again attempting to install windows. Hopefully it will be a success this time.

Final Note: My computer is finally back up and running again! I didn’t feel like putting on yet another post about my computer woes. Unfortunately though I am without my Microsoft Office software, but I will have to take care of that at a later date.

I have spent the majority of my day today attempting to reinstall windows XP on my PC. The main dilemma that I had was that I could not even start windows, which was the reason that I had to reinstall in the first place. Because I could not start windows, I was unable to back up my files. In order to back up these files, I ended up spending the majority of my time trying to find out how to go about doing this.

What ended up happening was that I had to use a program called Knoppix. From what I gathered, Knoppix is the CD version of the Linux operating system. This means that you don’t have to install Linux/Knoppix on your hard drive for it to work. All the files that your computer needs are on the CD.

To get Knoppix onto a CD, you first need a working computer which I luckily had. Then, you must go to the main Knoppix website to download the latest edition. After you download, you can then burn the .iso file to a CD. Next, you will need to set up your boot menu on the broken computer so that it boots from CD first and then Hard drive. This way it will automatically boot into the Knoppix program.

Once I got this all set up, I had some initial struggles getting the program to work. It seemed like everything was working alright,  but then the screen would go blank and say “out of range.” I think this happened because the screen that I was using was an LCD 19″ screen. After doing a bit of research I found out that if you hit F3 at the first screen, you can enter special setup commands. The command that got my screen was “knoppix vga=0″. After that everything worked perfectly more or less.

From time to time the Knoppix system kept crashing on my while I was trying to transfer files. I wasn’t expecting perfection, but this was getting annoying. I tried to find some other Linux programs to run. The ones I came across were “Damn Small Linux” and “Slax.” I found Damn Small Linux to be about worthless, but I don’t think I knew what I was doing. For some reason it wouldn’t let me access my files on my hard drive. Slax kept crashing, so I was even more worthless to me.

I decided to go back to Knoppix because that was the only one that had worked for the most part so far. When I went into the F3 screen I noticed that there were some other available commands. One I believe was called “toram.” This command temporarily installed Knoppix on the RAM in your computer. This allows the program to run entirely off of the RAM rather than constantly trying to read the CD. Once I applied this fix my crashes were but a distant memory. Also, everything ran a whole lot faster as well.

There was one annoying quirk about Knoppix. The reason I was using it in the first place was so that I could transfer files from my main hard drive to my external hard drive to be backed up. The problem I ran into was if my external was on and plugged in when I started Knoppix, then the main hard drive would not show up. If I started up Knoppix with the external off, then it would detect the main hard drive. It was only at this point where I could start up the external. Once that was detected everything worked fine.

In conclusion, I must say that Knoppix has saved my files from being deleted on the reinstall. If I were a bit more computer savvy, I could see myself switching over to Linux. It seems like they have their act together a bit more than Microsoft when it comes to certain things.

In a previous post on the Economic Stimulus checks, I noted that I would not be getting one because I was listed as a dependent on my parents 2007 tax return. My girlfriend also had the same status on her tax return, as she was a dependent on her parent’s return as well. The other day she received a letter from the IRS stating that she should be receiving her stimulus check within the next few days. If it didn’t come by then, she should expect it within six weeks. I find that interesting, because I did her return for her, and there is no reason why she should be getting one. It will be interesting to see if I receive the same letter from them, because we had the same filing status.

According to the letter that the IRS sent me earlier this year in regards to the stimulus checks, they said, “In addition, individuals cannot receive a payment if they can be claimed as a dependent of another taxpayer…” It seems as if we would both fall under those guidelines. I am curious to see if I get a letter from them about the same thing. I wouldn’t mind getting a stimulus, expecially since I just blew $200 buying Windows XP. Oh well.