Down and Out in the HD

I've just gone through a bad 4 weeks of fighting a bad infection. During that time I did not touch my various computer systems.

The Linux Box and the PSP I had little concern for, they just "keep on Truckin". But my Vista Acer Laptop gave me pause for concern...

On week 3 1/2 of non-use I decided to switch it on and see what was what.

Vista would not boot.

Crap! (under my breath I said: Windows, you've done it to me again)

Vista said a hardware error had occurred and would try to fix it. Would I like a restore to try and fix it?

The mouse pad pointer was there but dead, and the tab-key that should let me move to the Okay, try restore box didn't work either.

Crap!

I tried booting from a Live Linux CD, but that would only tell me the hardware was working fine, it was just windows having a problem.

The Acer notebook was being run off of AC, and I remembered that my cable box had problems during the same 3 weeks, and got stuck in the on position and wouldn't let the remote control it.

I disconnected the Acer from the wall and ran it off the internal battery (which I hoped was fully charged for a restore).

I rebooted the Laptop and the same screen of trying to fix the problem came up But this time, the mouse-pad was working.

I clicked yes, and 10 minutes later my Laptop was up and runing again.

Thank you Windows, Thank you Vista.