Pink’s daughter just brought her computer for repair. Same problem as Pink’s machine a couple weeks ago; slow response and lots of no-longer-used applications to delete. So I’ll just erase all that is on it now, and install a fresh copy of XP. I’ll track the progress in the comments below.
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April 14th, 2010 at 6:32 pm
08:20 PM: The customer arrived with her Gateway 3200S desktop computer.
08:30 PM: We discussed the symptoms and the machine’s history, and felt that the best course of action would be to reformat the hard drive and build it up again with a fresh copy of Windows XP.
08:45: We went through all desktop icons and program menus and she picked what she wanted to keep and what to discard.
09:00 PM: Next, we pulled up Windows explorer and she showed me the folders she’d like to carry forward to her “new” computer.
09:30 PM: Taking the backup now.
09:45 PM: Everything she wanted saved is now backed up to an external USB hard drive.
April 15th, 2010 at 10:39 am
01:37 PM: Initiated the destructive system recovery option by powering on the Gateway computer, and immediately pressing F10. This displayed the boot device options screen. From there, I hit the Esc key and received a message, saying that to enter system recovery, press F11. So I did that before the message disappeared, and this took me into the system recovery options.
01:40 PM: There, I selected the destructive recovery (reformats the hard drive) with backup. The backup part of this operation is underway now. It requires 4 GB of disk space, and apparently there’s enough space, as I got no error message when the operation began stating to the contrary.
01:42 PM: The restoration of Windows XP just started.
01:47 PM: The restoration is finished. Now, the computer is restarting.
01:48 PM: Device installation just began.
01:57 PM: Now, it’s installing the factory-provided applications. Ooops, one app install failed. Hopefully it’s not one of the ones the customer wants.
02:06 PM: Application installation done. System is rebooting.
02:20 PM: Completed the prompts for the XP setup / registration process. Downloading updates now…
06:00 PM: All updates have been successfully installed except for one: a Macromedia Flash Player security update. Investigating…
06:13 PM: The recovery procedure above also installed several programs that the customer does not use, and has requested be removed. Thus, the BigFix, Norton AntiVirus, and AOL programs have been deleted.
06:37 PM: Updating Adobe Reader 6.0 to version 9.3.
06:55 PM: Cleared the Flash Player update failure by removing the FLASH.OCX file from the folder:
c:\windows\system32\macromed\FlashThen, just to make sure I had a fully-functioning version of the flash player, I downloaded version 10. Subsequent update attempts displayed the error no more.
07:12 PM: All customer files have been restored to the new XP installation from backups.
07:21 PM: Installed Yahoo Messenger.
May 4th, 2010 at 4:49 pm
07:40 PM: The customer called. She’s unable to install the Verizon Internet Security Suite. I supplied a document that explains how to install this software and attempted to talk her through it. But the instructions appear to be written for advanced computer users. We planned on doing this the day she picked up the machine. But the power failure that day stopped that. So technically, I owe her this installation. Thus it’s best if I just go there and do this myself. So I’ll visit her day after tomorrow.
May 19th, 2010 at 8:15 pm
I visited the customer recently, and successfully installed the Verizon Internet Security Suite software.
This project is therefore finished.