Monday, January 23, 2006

Slight delay

My computer recently decided that I wasn't a worthy enough user and locked me out. Something apparently went wrong with the user profiles and logon process, which is interesting since I'm the only one that uses this PC. It wasn't anything sinister; an error would pop up but the logon screen changed so quickly that I couldn't do anything about it. A different screen would appear and it offered me no options or access to Windows. Eventually, by pounding on keys I finally got the screen change to stop, which allowed me to finally log onto the system. In other words, a small child or pet probably could have solved this problem.

I then started the process of backing up and preparing to reinstall XP. After several oh-so-fun hours on Saturday and Sunday, the system is mostly back to where it should be; XP is fine and I have almost all of the programs and settings I need. While it's a pain to deal with, the results are worth it. The system runs better when it thinks it's new. The killer, though, is the amount of Windows patches and necessary reboots.

I don't think I lost any data, but if I did it's because I forgot it was on the primary hard drive. (I generally save all important files on a second hard drive for this very reason. When it comes time for a reinstall, I don't have to worry about what happens when I format the first drive.)

The point of this is that this weekend I was going to upload some new scans, upload older scans again, and update some of the surname pages to reflect recent findings. Obviously, that didn't work out. Some of the items are interesting. Well, if you are researching the same families you'll learn something.

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