My Dell workstation, which bluescreened last weekend, is back in service.
I’m guessing that an anti-virus program attacked one or more of my system files; as a result, the standard recovery disk and normal restore procedures were ineffective.
A local computer repair company was able to rescue the data and restore the OS, Windows XP. About half a day of re-installation of installed software, checking FTP IPs with customers and attaching databases put me back in business.
Fortunately, one of my customers had set up an extra workstation at their shop, and they were happy to have me work onsite. All of my customer files were archived on their servers, so I was able to continue work and even do some remote debugging.
The real “hero” of this story, though, is the iBook I bought at the opening of Apple Computer’s Cambridge, MA store in December 2001. A couple of weeks ago, I’d had the memory upgraded and additional software installed in preparation for a presentation later this month.
Thanks to the iBook, I was able to stay in touch for the week that the PC was down.
I’ve installed different anti-virus software on the PC, have purged of a lot of unneeded software, and upgraded the installeds, so it seems to be peppier.
From now on, I’m using the iBook to read emails as a first line of defense against future problems resulting directly or, in my case, indirectly from virus detection.
Live and learn.