Part I --- How I Somehow Deleted Everything on my Laptop (and then found it again)

Today I decided I would scan my computer with AVG, do a complete clone backup to my My Book 500 GB external hard drive (because I didn't bother to backup my laptop), and then utterly commit a fresh reinstall of Windows. I need some way to get another year out of my laptop without having to expand my hard drive. (If anyone has a laptop hard drive that's 100+ GB and at least 5400 RPM, and you have no use for it but to give it to me for free, please do that now. My HD is 80 GB, and another 20 GB would be great.)

Anyways, the problem really occurred when, well, let's just say I skipped to step three, that is, the "commit a fresh reinstall of Windows" step. The problem is, in this context of skipping the first two steps, it now read as "Reformat Hard Drive and reinstall Windows (to make matters worse, you forgot to backup, fool). Resistance is futile. We are the Borg."


A bit more detailedly, I examined my PC recovery software. I have a 13 GB recovery partition on my hard drive. It does stuff (and takes up space), so I decided to see precisely what it did, to assess my abilities in terms of backup and formatting. My experimenting with it caused a process to begin. "Quit or begin?" it said. I figured I'd see what it does. I've followed this pattern for my entire life and it's never once went wrong...except with women. Works fine with men.

"You look very haggard today." "Yes, I do look haggard, I did not shave. I am a man." You walk up to a woman and tell her she looks very haggard- and that she forgot to shave- and that she's a man- well, she'll say "Yes, I look very haggard," but she'll spell it "halberd." It never works with women, especially at medieval weaponry displays in museums. My question is this: just what do they expect to happen? Stabbing somebody with a weapon will get you in big trouble, it's not a great way to vent your offended feelings. Stop this madness before I am eventually killed.


Anyway, the non-interruptible process began, but me being me, I interrupted it, Alt+F4 style (that will close windows, don't do it right now). Turns out, it was 90 seconds into deleting system files. You...need system files. My laptop shut down very naturally...but when I started it back up, it wouldn't continue because of hal.dll which it informed me was missing. I'm sure there were lots of other startup/stability files deleted. Thus I turn to my recovery discs. They're scratched up (how did I let that happen?), but they still work. I did not need them, because the 13 GB recovery partition was still there, but I sure had them. Y'know, had I needed them. Totally.


Sadly, then the confusion set in. Microsoft, on their website, says that System Recovery- the NON-REFORMAT and NON-PARTITIONING, standard version- will not delete files. Problem is, in-between these comforting words are words like "backup before attempting" and "recovery will cause all programs installed to need to be reinstalled but will not delete DATA FILES."

Whatever Data Files are. What does this craziness mean! I guess the moral of this story is, "Backup often to multiple sources."

I woke my mom from a sound nap. "Mom, my computer will not start." "Call Norry, our company's IT guy and bother him on his Saturday." "OK." I got in contact with Norry. He said I could A: go ahead and do the recovery- AS LONG AS IT DOES NOT SAY REFORMAT OR PARTITION- or I could wait until Monday and he could copy my HD contents onto a drive and get it to me and I could go ahead and do a destructive reinstall of Windows.

I decided to try the recovery. After all, it said nowhere that I would lose data (unless I chose "reformat"), and I don't need my computer down for a week where I tediously hand-pick files to reinstall. Not when I have no choice in the matter, at least. If I have a choice? That's fine, I'll take the tedious hand-picking any day. That was a complete and total lie, I apologize.

So I did the recovery. It took around an hour to complete...then after an ABSOLUTELY MIND-BENDINGLY LONG startup and setup process, I...






...oh. It thus ends in a sorrowful cliffhanger. See Part II --- How I Deleted Everything on my Laptop (and then found it again)

Note: Part II was not here on Saturday, I actually had a bit more written but I redid it on Monday and incorporated it into Part II.