January 02, 2007

The Joys of Microsoft

So this morning I said to myself, "Self, I think I'd like to listen to some music today." So I went over and hooked up the NAS that we keep in the back that has some 70 GB of music on it (all legal, of course.) Now, because I'm lazy and didn't want to go hunt down the network name or address of the NAS (which is necessary to get the music) I figured I'd just use the UPnP (Universal Plug and Play... it's a network service that lets you use network stuff seamlessly like it was on your computer) functionality on the NAS to my advantage. Problem is, Windows XP frequently doesn't install and enable UPnP by default... so I went and found the install option and started it... and then it asked for the XP disk. Well... I was kinda busy at the moment and didn't have the disk handy, so I cancelled the install so as to get back to it later. And that's where the fun began.

Upon cancelling the install, most of my network functionality ceased. I could open up the remote share on the server, but I couldn't use web browsers and I couldn't use any of my internet-connecting programs... at all. Several hours of attempted fixes later, here I am, reinstalling Windows (after the repair failed.) Granted, given a couple of days, I could probably find a fix... this isn't unfixable. But I don't have the time. This is the one computer in the world that I need working almost all of the time. So here I am... reloading windows. At least this time I'm not installing x64 edition.

Posted by Vengeful Cynic at January 2, 2007 03:45 PM | TrackBack