Limited Development

Don’t you just hate it when you have crappy weekends? This weekend was just one such weekend like that. My PC was dying, it was Bluescreening the second the Windows login logo appeared, I had to go away for the weekend, so I figured I would leave it alone, just system restore when I come back from the time away and it will all be dandy.

Weekend away, no Internet, middle of nowhere, thankfully I took my trusty Xbox with me which was my glorious saviour…or at least thats what I thought. Yup, my Xbox RROD’d, my heart sank when I saw those 3 bastardous lights flicker when I returned from cooking dinner and went to turn my Xbox on again. Trusty Xbox was no more.

So, obviously panicking like a mad man, freaking out that I had no Internet to go online and read some guides about how to attempt to fix it. I previously read that it could just be a simple issue of connections not being too great at the back of the Xbox, I did have my doubts that unplugging and replugging it back it would work, considering I literally did not touch the Xbox, it did not move a budge since it was trundling away in all its glory. With my shock and amazement, it did not work. Figured I would go ahead and try the good ol’ towel trick, managed to locate 2 towels to wrap the beast in. The hardest part of this endeavor was trying to remember the time to leave in baking in its own blood..I mean heat for. I guessed 25 minutes was a safe time considering thats not too long, but also its long enough for it to get fairly hot. Let it cool down for a while and haypresto, it worked like a charm! I played a bit of FIFA, trying to drown my sorrows considering I knew it would not last long.

After caning Madrid 3 – 0, I decided to test the longevity of the ‘fix’, turned the Xbox off and on again, and to my dismay it blinked 3 horrible red lights at me.

Upon returning to my humble aboad, I tried the desktop PC, instant Bluescreen. Great, this weekend was beginning to look like an incredibly shit and expensive one indeed. I figured I’d try to repair the installation, upon the reboot, I managed to get further down the login process, however to my shock, the visuals mimicked those of the game Doom. Logging in I was greeted with a lovely YOUR COPY OF WINDOWS IS NOT GENUINE!, this copy of Windows is 100% legit, paid with hard-earned cash, or perhaps my student loan money, either way its a real copy. I checked to see if my graphics card was being detected, by trying to change the resolution, it did not look good as it was not listed. I decided to check the Device Manager, considering there was also an issue with my wireless card.

To my horror the Device manager window was littered with big yellow warning signs, letting me know the device driver was buggered. At this point, I was getting a little worried, I thought to myself, I have a great idea, I made a system restore save only a week ago, and even then I remember seeing at least 8 restore points automatically made. Brilliant I could pick one of my choice and I’ll be on my way. Opening the search box I typed ‘system restore’. Clicked on the box and waited for the list of restore points to load the countless number of restore points.

THERE ARE NO RESTORE POINTS AVAILABLE TO RESTORE TO…Unbelievable, my copy of Windows has literally imploded. I was well and truly stuffed.

Reinstallation was a doddle, sadly I have already done it numerous times on this machine, upon rebooting, before having to ever login, I was met by a screen telling me I needed to scan C:\ drive for errors, oh great, more problems. I let it do its thing, and it managed to fix at least 10 issues, what the hell? I literally only just reinstalled it, I havent even pressed a key since clicking Okay to start installation of Windows.

On the reboot after fixing the mysterious issues, the screen was blue, I could see the cursor and nothing else. No right click or anything, I thought great explorer has cocked up, and indeed it had. I could run the task manager and after only seeing 4 processes running, with explorer being none of them, I proceeded to try to start the process, explorer.exe never populated the list, only a service called con corrupt file ran..fuck explorer.exe is corrupted?!? and I still have not even logged in once.

After swift Googling on my iPod touch, I gave up and just reinstalled again. This time, it was good, and that ladies and gentlemen is where I stand right now. Clean install of Windows, which keeps telling me to scan C: drive. A broken Xbox, with Halo Freaking Reach coming out in just over a month.

Going to start the motions of demanding Microsoft to ask me to send my Xbox to them for them to send a working Xbox back to me. Hopefully it will happen swiftly with no hiccups, that, judging past my weekend, will be not an easy task.

Great Karma, I spent my whole weekend looking after someones house, as a kind gesture and in return I get a whole load of hurt and destruction. Life just isnt fair.

Well the website is up and running, I will use this space to discuss things I am working on as  well as general ramblings. Hopefully WordPress will help keep this organised and not be a total pain in the arse.