Wherein TA is screwed either way...

[technical.angel]

SUCCESS!!

"Still installing software, but it rebooted and I got a desktop."

Now I have to go find out what he did to make it work.

[technical.angel]

Honestly, I don't think most of our students are that smart, and the other students have better machines.

I mean, what else do you expect with a lappy still running XP???? WITHOUT SERVICE PACKS???

I'm really hoping the elastic spine is only because of the wireless issues. I don't think it'll last long. :: crosses fingers ::

[Fire_on_High]

I told him about the bad sectors, and he said that she's going to have to take some responsibility for it.

She better. Otherwise, everyone's going to be dumping their machines on you at the first kachunk once they figure out all they have to do is get it into your hands before it goes fully TU, trying to bilk you for a replacement.

[technical.angel]

From the Big Boss "the laptop says it's 98% done. Cross your fingers, it's about to reboot."

[technical.angel]

Well, it's a student's computer.., that broke in our care. So, yeah. We do have our butt covered in paper, but still.

The Big Boss declaration is that it booted when she brought it in, so it needs to boot when we give it back. Unfortunately, I think he meant that it must boot Windows... and from the hard drive.. which makes it harder.

I told him about the bad sectors, and he said that she's going to have to take some responsibility for it. So, I guess we're just trying to get it to boot at least once.

[Fire_on_High]

No offense, but with a hard drive that flaky, isn't this pretty much a lost cause? Even if you shoehorn something on there, it's not going to last very long.

[technical.angel]

UPDATE:

I spent half the morning trying to figure out how to reformat the hard drive into NTFS on Unbuntu. Failed. (Meaning: Too scared to click the button)

I spent the other half trying to make an ultimate boot USB. Failed.

Came back from lunch, walked past my worktable to put my purse away.. and saw............. no laptop of death and disease.

Small moment of panic, and an IM to big boss.

So, now Big Boss has the laptop. We'll see how long he lasts. At least he's already bald. So he won't go through the pulling out of the hair stage.

I'll update when I have more info.

[technical.angel]

yeah, now I have to convince big boss of that.

Hopefully a half hour of screwing with it will convince him. Sigh.

[RichS]

Okay, it's Monday, back to the Laptop of Death and Disease.

One thing I forgot to mention earlier.. when I finally got Unbuntu to boot, it gave me a nice little message.. a million and a half bad sectors.. a MILLION AND A HALF. So, that on top of a battery which may or may not work, and a CD/DVD drive which only works in about 1 of 4 reboots.... yeah.......

Possible bad HD, intermittently working optical drive...sounds like that laptop had issues before you got it.

[technical.angel]

Okay, it's Monday, back to the Laptop of Death and Disease.

One thing I forgot to mention earlier.. when I finally got Unbuntu to boot, it gave me a nice little message.. a million and a half bad sectors.. a MILLION AND A HALF. So, that on top of a battery which may or may not work, and a CD/DVD drive which only works in about 1 of 4 reboots.... yeah.......

So, now, back in Unbuntu, to try to format the HD again..

Just how many 's are fatal again?

[TheRabbi]

Microsoft Security Essentials isn't half bad. Its very lightweight, updated often, and completely free to all legitimate users of Windows. Much better than AVG.

This.

Also, TA, this sucks hard, because at this point, no matter what, you're going to end up missing *something* that the laptop owner needed. I wish you good luck and a makeup dinner.

[Hyndis]

Microsoft Security Essentials isn't half bad. Its very lightweight, updated often, and completely free to all legitimate users of Windows. Much better than AVG.

[Andara Bledin]

I need more luck.. MMMMOOOOORREEEEE LLLUUUUCCCKKKKK!!!!

More Luck, incoming!

*sprinkles a bit of spare luck over poor TA*

After poking around a little, we find safe mode is hanging up on the supposedly uninstalled AVG files.

Not helpful or anything, but I despise AVG. It has been nothing but trouble every time I've gone anywhere near it.

^-.-^

[technical.angel]

Yeah, this one in partic. It seems to just reformat the hard drive and install the recovery partition, and then you can go to the HP partition and install windows.

Of course, I couldn't get to the partition......................................

[Alephcat]

having tried to use them many times, hp recovery discs are just not worth using, they are so setup to do only one thing they are of almost no use for actual recovery.