The RubeTube

(This will be a long story, I promise.)

My work laptop died last night. Well, not completely. It could only boot Windows part of the way; it goes up to the black boot-up screen with the Windows XP logo and the animating bars, but then the hard disk just stops reading all of a sudden while the bars just keep scrolling along. None of the three supposedly-safe modes worked either; at some point I get in the boot-up process, a BSOD flashes briefly and causes my laptop to restart.

After all that, I gave up on trying to get Windows to boot and focused instead on getting my important files (work-related files, downloads, Outlook data, and some personal stuff) to a safe location, and repairing my Windows installation. I had hunch that my Windows installation just got corrupted but the rest of my files were still intact; this hunch would later prove to be correct. The easiest way would've been to call the help desk and get my laptop repaired, but that's for wimps. I figured I could solve this on my own.

Step 1 was to backup my files to my external hard disk; I needed to do this just in case everything is wiped out in the process of reinstalling Windows. I had to find a way to get my files directly to the external hard disk because my personal laptop didn't have enough space. As you can probably imagine, I tried many methods to get this done:

1. I already had a burned CD of Ubuntu Linux 6.06 (Dapper Drake). From the Live CD, it could read from my laptop's hard disk (the files were still intact). Although writing to NTFS (my external hard disk's file system) from Linux was still risky, I didn't have much of a choice. I did some research and found NTFS-3G, a stable read/write driver for NTFS partitions. However, I couldn't get it installed properly even if I added the proper apt-get repository.
2. I installed Samba on Ubuntu so I could set up a file share on my mounted laptop hard disk. I tried the best I could, but I wasn't able to find the file share from my personal laptop, even if my work laptop could be seen in the Windows workgroup.
3. I set up the IIS default FTP web site on my personal laptop to have a home directory directly on the external hard disk. After disabling the firewalls (and unplugging the Internet connection), it worked! But only for a while. I got some weird write-speed issues after a few gigs were copied over.
4. Finally, I decided to download the latest version of Ubuntu, 7.04 Feisty Fawn, which had NTFS-3G in it's Ubuntu universal repository. I had to download it overnight and burn the image to disk, but it worked! I got it installed properly and both drives were mounted successfully. All of my important files were safely copied over to the external hard disk.
   

After I felt confident that my files were safe, I went about reinstalling Windows. I had a Windows XP Pro with SP2 CD lying around at home. But as you can guess, it wasn't so simple:

1. I put the CD in the tray and restarted my laptop. My heart stopped for a few moments when I got to the part where I'm supposed to pick an installation to repair, but Windows told me it couldn't find any hard disks! W. T. F. I soon realized that my laptop had a SATA hard disk and the Windows CD didn't have any SATA drivers for it.
2. I downloaded the SATA driver from the HP website but for some stupid reason, it would only extract to a floppy disk! Last time I checked, most laptops don't have floppy drives anymore so I had to extract to a "virtual floppy disk"; I'd heard of virtual CD/DVDs before, but a virtual floppy disk???
   
3. At the start of Windows setup, you can press F6 to provide setup with third-party drivers for your hard disk. Unfortunately, it could only read those drivers from a floppy disk. W. T. F.
4. Using the instructions detailed here, I used nLite to create an installation CD with the SATA driver included. But just when I thought there was light at the end of the tunnel, Windows still couldn't detect the hard disk.
   

In the end, I just decided to give up, while I still had my sanity (and my files!) intact. Even if I had somehow managed to repair Windows, I still couldn't know for sure if it would finally boot. I called the help desk, somehow managed to explain my situation to an Indian call center agent, and had someone get on my case. I still went to the office, but I spent the rest of my day extremely unproductive. I got very little sleep (two hours, while Feisty Fawn was downloading) and spent half a day acting like a hacker.

If you managed to read through this whole blog entry, then I'll have spared you some trouble if you ever experience this exact same problem. Two words: reformat, reinstall. (Or possibly: use Ubuntu.)

Labels: :(, HP, laptops, work