system-failure posts

We were halfway to Betelgeuse when the Pan-Galactic Gargle Blasters kicked in. We had two bags of--

... but first, we interrupt this column to bring you a Public Service Announcement:


At some point, whether it's because you're doing something warranty-voiding, or just because it's the worst possible time, the specter of data loss is going to rear its inconvenient head, maw dripping with negated bits. Whether this results in an epic cascade of profanity and spontaneous weeping, or just some muttering and the retrieval of some storage media is directly proportional to how recent your last backup was.

Yes, this falls solidly into the realm of Stuff You Think About Moments After It Will Do You Any Good Whatsoever, right up there with taking a headlong plunge into a room of whelp eggs, tasting day-old fugu, or doing that thing with the mayonnaise and the goat.

So, your computer has done something very, very, comprehensively, unquestionably bad. Unbootably bad. Now what? If you bought a system from HP or Dell or one of the other big players in the OEM PC market, you might be tempted to reach for the System Restore Disk (CD or DVD) that shipped with it to resurrect your moribund system.

A word of advice here: Don't.