.First a little history. My humongous 4 gb hard drive kept telling me I was out of disk space when I knew I had like 1.85 gb left. Especially after I kept backing up items onto cd's just to make more room. Needless to say, I was attempting to put together what I think is an awsome little video clip. But to do so I have to save all the components of the clip uncompressed for quality purposes. These, when put all together for the final product is when I use compression. Well, I couldn't save anything. Something was wrong with my Sony PCV130. (This is important to remember in this little story)
Now, I ran Dr Solomons Anti-virus, Norton Utilities (which always told me my boot sector is reporting an error causing incorrect reading of disk space - which - I always fixed (so I thought) yet always was there when I ran disk doctor), defragged, optimized registry and swap file, etc...
So, I decided to just format the whole damn drive and start from scratch. I should be able to do this 1 to 2 nights tops. Yeah Right!
Here are some of the lessons I've either learned as I went along or I just knew to do. YOU figure out which one was which.
Step one: Back everything up. I mean everything. You never know.
Step two: Tell wife you will be very busy every night (and weekend) and that for the next "week" you will reluctantly experiment with the symptoms of PMS so she should understand your mood swings and just leave you alone.
Step 3: Mind altering drugs!! (only kidding - ??)
Step 4: Don't get too obsessed. Get to bed before 1:30 am when you have to get up at 5:45 in the morning. Your co-wrokers will appreciate it.
Step 5: Don't try and workout in the same room as your computer when you think you have the time while you are downloading and/or installing updates. You will have very crappy workouts because you will be trying to do computer stuff in between sets and routines. You will most likely find yourself saying "Nahhh, I just can't get motivated today, I might as well get this thing working".
Step 6: Learn that if you own a name brand computer built specifically for that brand (ie: Sony) that the drivers on your video card's website (in my case ATI) or on the windows 98 SE CD may not be compatible with the original files that came with your W95 rev a. Go to your PC's mfr website first. Do this especillay if you can't get your video capture device to work.
Well this morning I finally got my Capture device to work. My programs are loading faster and my swap file went from 66 megs at bootup to around 28 at bootup. My biggest concern was getting my video drivers correct. It was a major pain in the ass.
I believe my problems stemmed from too many programs and upgrades going into and off of my computer since I owned it. It came with W95 rev A. I upgraded it to W95 B. Then I upgraded it to 98, then again to 98 SE. My Windows\system folder alone was 0ver 200 Megs of crap before the format.
Another lesson I learned - keep track of what you load and unload. Not everything comes off your computer when you uninstall. Even if you do it correctly. I believe all the different dll versions that get put on your machine from all different kinds of programs will eventually conflict somewhere along the line with other apps.
Another lesson learned: KNOW that it will be time consuming putting stuff back. The drive formats in a heartbeat. It's a heartache getting it back to function the way you want it to.
Well, I thought I'd share my "FUN WEEK WITH WITH HARD DRIVE FORMATTING". I am back on line and ready to go for the most part. (Knock wood)
Scott
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