pyoor_excuse | Not entirely planned reinstall

So, my computer's been a bit 'off'; a while back when I installed the SnapScan 1212 drivers it started to behave oddly; crashing periodically (as in kernel-fault, bluescreen of death, instant reset crashing); particularly after burning AudioCDs. But otherwise it seemed to be okay.

But today, just as I was about to head out it did it for no apparent reason. BANG SPLUTCH REBOOT. It went. But I just hit the power off button, 'cos I was going out anyway.

And then... I came home... and found that: my machine wouldn't boot; Windows setup informed me that my main hard disk (that one with all my uni work on) was not formated, was formated in some format it couldn't read, or hopelessly corrupt. Finally, getting the W2k3 machine up here (at around 11pm) and finding a monitor that would talk to the graphics card (my 21" monitor decided to report NO SIGNAL for all 3 cards) and getting the disk plugged in as a second harddisk (along with one of the old 40 Gig drives) produced a scandisk complete with badsectors. So I've managed to copy, I think, all the work and mail off it. And now I'm into reinstalling windows on the 40Gig drive. In a bit I'll check if the Maxtor is under warranty.

Bollocks.

:-/