I doubt there’s gonna be much of a story in this, but it’s 12:42, Aug 17, as I begin installing WinXP Service Pack 2. Mostly I’m writing this out of boredom - watching filenames flutter by over a flat blue progress bar was never my thing.
Like most of the geek community, I “splurged” on this Pack and downloaded the full 266mb version … you know, the one with the warning that goes “DO NOT DOWNLOAD THIS IF YOU ARE ONLY UPDATING ONE MACHINE, etc.” Not that anybody actually pays attention to those warnings. Hell, I’d been waiting for SP2 since they announced it last year and I sure as hell wasn’t going to wait for another week before they started serving it piecemeal over Windows Update.
So anyway, I got it several days ago (torrent-style, of course; it’s one of those pseudo-political statements) but had been holding off on actually installing it because … Well, I was scared. That Pack was 266mb for a reason (and most certainly not because it was jammed with free, legal MP3s) and the prospect of it fucking up my machine was positively pants-wetting.
But this evening I came to the point where I was too tired to work and too restless to play games, and found myself aimlessly backing up folders between my 2 hard drives. Maybe in the back of my head, I was already anticipating disaster. (Granted, I have had no previous bad experiences with Service Packs in XP or 2k, but M$ doesn’t exactly have a spotless record when it comes to stability, so it’s not as if my fears were altogether misplaced.)
Essentially I figured, what the hell, gotta face the music some time. So I did it. Clickety-click and away we go.
Which brings me back to writing this piece, this non-story of mine. It’s now 1am on the dot and my PC has just rebooted (no, this was a normal post-install reboot, not a crash or a BSOD or anything like that). The XP logo is coming up a bit slower than usual, but that’s normal behavior after a big update.
Oops wait. That little loading bar’s not moving.
Fuck.
Ok. I waited 5 minutes and nothing happened. I’m cold-booting as I write this line. Hopefully it’ll boot successfully this ti …
Fuck.
Ohkaaay then. Let’s try booting via our “Last Known Good Configuration.”
Hmm. Nope.
“Safe Mode” then?
Nu-uh.
Power off, do a little monkey-dance, then boot and pray …?
… Well now. I believe this constitutes a real problem.