Laptop hates work.

Late last year, my laptop gave up on its tender life on 3 occasions. 3 times, within 2 bloody (pardon me) weeks. These 2 weeks encapsulated a couple of due dates, dates which were absolutely non-negotiable.

Blue screen of death (BSOD), as the technie world calls it. My laptop suffered from the widely feared BSOD.

To revive my laptop, I sacrificed all the precious trash I kept in my hard disk. And during the 3rd time that I reformatted my laptop again, my other half called me the 'Queen of Reformatting'. Gosh, I was thinking 'It's either my laptop detests me or it plainly hates work!'

All was rosy through summer. My laptop served me well and was perfect.

Now that we entered the 3rd week of its hectic working life, it decided to tell me that it REALLY hates to go to work.

Me: "Hey! Wake up!"
Laptop: "Nah, no way. I hate work. I'm not going to that darn office." *Rolls about in bed*
Me: "What? BSOD AGAIN?!"
Laptop: "Nah, I'm not that boring. Here's something new. Don't be lazy, go read my screen."
Me: "\system32/hal.dll is corrupted or missing. Please reinstall a copy of the above file.".................*Speechless*............................What the hell is this?

I then hurriedly turned the house upside down to find the system recovery disk, which I finally found after turning the entire room and kitchen area inside out. It was sitting in a box by the couch all the while, probably laughing at how I couldn't find it. Apparently, the disk likes to engage in some hide and seek fun. And yes, I don't fancy it anymore. Not now, anyway.

With the disk and zero instructions, it's not like I can do anything because I know nothing about first aid (Oh I mean rescue). Next up, I went googling on my other half's laptop (Thank God he fixed up his screen. About a month back, his screen looks the same, on and off.) Google, as usual, did his homework and got me heaps of links. Common problem, I reckon. But nothing seemed to help. Even Microsoft's site which specifically listed what to do if your hal.dll file is missing. Then I was real lucky and chanced upon this random link recommended in the forum.

What a trickster my laptop is! Though its the hal.dll file that is missing, that wasn't the problem for me! It was the boot.ini! (Don't worry if you don't understand a thing here, neither do I.) So the link led me to the Microsoft site which listed what to do when you are having problems with your boot.ini. All it took was some typing and bravo! My laptop started up again! Yay for me! Sobs for the laptop of course! ;p

This saved my world yesterday:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;330184

And so my laptop goes: "Darn. I'm alive and back at work again."

Either ways, I'm relieved. My paper is due tomorrow and well, I'm not even a quarter way through. I'm worried but at least my laptop has started up. I reckon I definitely need God's blessings to last through today. :) I need buckets of determination, truckloads of wisdom and definitely a working laptop.