I spent an hour and a half on the phone with a Dell technician today. He was very patient, helpful, and spent almost an hour trying to find a diagnostic that wouldn't mean wiping my hard drive clean. I have to say I was impressed with their hotline.

In the end, we had to. He thinks a virus made it all go bonkers last night and that's why it totally froze. I told him my Avast was up to date etc but like he said, no anti-virus programme is ever 100% efficient.

So my hard drive's been wiped clean, and he helped me partition it properly once we reinstalled Vista. Then he sent me an email explaining how to reinstall all the drivers, but the weird thing is that a) I don't have ANY CD in my Dell package to do that, and b) everything seems already installed properly. The only thing is that I have to format the D drive, which I'm doing now.

It's just a lot of stress and I spent the night tossing and turning in my sleep as I tried to remember what I'd lost that couldn't be recovered. In the end all I could think of was a bit of work-data (but most of my work stuff is on my external HD anyway), two starts of fanfic that I hadn't sent to anyone, including the smut one I was writing for sc_angel72 and the second chapter of my Doctor/Rose shipping recap, which was almost complete.

The rest can be recovered somehow. I think. I hope.

Thanks, Y. :) Yes, got it working again, though there's still stuff to solve and I'm keeping in touch with the Dell tech for now.

Is it pathetic or what that I'm completely lost without my computer? Right now it's the same way it was when I first bought it, lacking all the stuff that makes it mine. I have to reinstall all the programmes, get Wanadoo's Wi-Fi to work, get it all set the way I want it to be.

Then again thank goodness I kept my old Acer laptop, or else I'd be internet-deprived at the moment (still haven't unpacked my Dell desktop, and even if I had, there's no phone line or internet at my flat) But even then, I'm lost. I'm not used to this keyboard or this screen any more - the keyboard's Canadian, and changing the layout to French (since I completely lost the habit of typing on a QWERTY keyboard) means I can't find the asterix or the arrow-brackets any more.

The only thing I had no problem going back to is XP. Or I thought so, until it bloody rebooted for an update on me without giving me any time to postpone said-reboot. *headdesk*

Ouch! Sorry about the lost 20 lines! You should try and call Dell about the useless battery (unless your warranty's past its date) - I told the tech about the slightly loose cord yesterday (especially as the laptop kept giving me messages about power and such, and had done so a couple of times before) and he said Dell would ship me a new one to check if the problem was the cord or the port.

Unfortunately, I don't think I'll be able to retrieve my files. The hard drive's been wiped completely clean before I resinstalled Vista. Thank goodness I was already a little paranoid about saving my files, so my entire year of work was saved onto my external hard drive. I think losing that would have driven me bonkers. There were a bunch of work-files I hadn't saved, but it's nowhere near as bad as losing everything.

As for fanfic, I had three Doctor Who WIPs going. The most recent one had been sent over to a friend of mine two minutes before the crash. The two others will need to be rewritten, and I'm a little bummed about the smut one because I'd started it pre-Journey's End, so it wasn't influenced at all by the actual outcome of Journey's End. Hopefully I can recapture that without being influenced by what happened on screen. The other was a post-New Earth extension written after a word-prompt by dave7. I'm a little miffed about losing my Ten/Rose picspam recap, because I'd been working on it lots and it was almost ready to be posted. But that's easier to rewrite and recompile than fanfic.

The rest that's been lost is email, but then the most annoying thing about that is losing backed-up booking confirmations for my plane ticket to Canada and the Doctor Who exhibition in London. Thank goodness I'd printed off the tickets for both and stored them away on good old paper. There were password-info for various websites etc, like a really great work-website I pay access to, but that's usually sent out again when you tell them you "lost" your information.

As far as I know, everything else can be retrieved one way or another, given time and patience. ;)

That's certainly good to know in case something like that happens to me again... though I'm going to be even more paranoid about saving my files now. ;) Thank goodness I didn't lose a great deal in the crash, what with most of my stuff being on the external hard drive anyway. I should really consider backing up that hard drive actually... *ponders*

And yep, going to the UK first, then Canada. I haven't been in the UK since 2004 (okay, that's not true, I was there for four days back in April, but that was a business trip) and in Canada since 2006. I'm SO going to pig out on Tim Horton's doughnuts... yummy!