I normally run XP on my desktop but decided to install Vista alongside it so I can use either when I want. Long story short, I can’t access neither XP nor Vista. So, I get to reinstall everything and give it a try again — never give up or you’ll never get what you want.

This is why I wonder if I actually know what I’m doing with computers… at all. This isn’t the first time I’ve managed to completely screw over my computer, haha. I’ve done far worse.

One of the first times that I messed up one of my computers was when I was much younger and much less knowledgeable. I was running an old Windows 2000 machine, probably the best machine I’ve ever had (relatively speaking). It was a crappy 450mhz machine when the norm was 1GHz. The computer ran as if it could run for ages.

Being somewhat overly satisfied with my working computer, I decided to install some odd version of linux and see if I could get it working. A problem or two arose and I found myself with, what seemed to be, a completely ruined machine. When you tried to boot it, the screen would spit out an error message with “No operating system found,” even after freshly reinstalling Windows with my “rescue cd.”

Frustrated, I took my only computer to CompUSA and had them look into the problem, which eventually cost over $100 to repair.

With my knowledge as it is these days, I would’ve laughed in their face had I been offered that kind of price.

I think back on events like that in my past and become even more pissed off when my computer isn’t working now. I’ve got all of these tools at my disposal and I still run into stupid problems all the time.

I intend on writing up a good computer management blog post in the near future to help people manage their computers better, just as my friend did a while ago.