i ordered the "no, i will not fix your computer" shirt from thinkgeek.com but it hasn't arrived yet. as i have my twiddle thumbs's computer's guts sprawled out, i wish i was wearing that shirt. she is having audio issues. the multimedia buttons on her keyboard stopped working, then a couple weeks later, she lost all audio. we thought maybe the driver got corrupted and that if we used the restore disk, all would be fine. (WRONG!) so i offered to run the restore disk and babysit the computer. her computer's restore disk is almost as fucked up as mine. it's supposed to restore it to out of the box state (LIAR!), not reformat (as required by my computer's disk), but you may lose some registry keys or something, causing you to reinstall some software. ok, i can deal with that. (CAREFUL!)

long story short, i started this project last evening. things did not go smooth. the restore disk sucks. the audio is still nill. a lot of software needs to be reinstalled, including disks we can't find like the one for the printer. i stayed up until past 3am. i opened up the computer, thinking that the audio card might be have a loose cable. it's built into the mother board. great...

i knew that the restore disk was a fucking liar about not re-writing over files because before using the disk, i checked to see how much space was being used on the hard drive. it was about 15.5 gigs. after the restore, i checked again. i thought it would be taking up more space because it would install files that have long been erased. nope, now only 10 gigs are being used. what was lost in those 5 gigs?!?!?! i'm afraid...

i took today off work and have spent all day and night installing software and downloading updates. first though i had to download some corrective patches because the windows installer would not function! what a pain! an even bigger pain is that all norton programs refuse to open. i decided to erase them completely and reinstall them. norton is now unable to install anti-virus and live update, which isn't very helpful. i will put off the norton for now and concentrate on finding all the software disks. a lot of our stuff, most of our stuff is still in boxes in the garage. we haven't unpacked since moving 1.5 years ago. i rummaged around and found some disks but not the printer disk. the drivers are not available on the company's web site for the correct operating system. other drivers won't work. i download them..with a modem. (SUCKED!) the drivers built in with windows for a similar printer works, but it doesn't have the fancy options that make the printer so great. this will have to do for now.

i remembered that i have an old audio card in the garage but not the install disk. i put it in twiddle thumbs's computer as a present (if it works). i connected the cdrw and the dvd to the card. (CROSSES FINGERS) i looked around the company's website for drivers and they were very unhelpful. i searched around the net and found what was supposed to be the drivers for it. it wasn't, but it was close and it works. there is sound from the computer, the cdrw, and the dvd! (CHEERS)

i swear, i must have restarted the computer at least 50 times today. almost every fucking install and update required a restart.

i have never had any problems with my imac and it's older than twiddle thumbs's computer. i told her that from now on, don't buy pcs.

the moral of the story: NEVER EVER USE THE RESTORE DISK.