Little Luke "Skywalker"

Friday, April 06, 2007

Bad Weekend

Just when we thought we could have a wonderful weekend, followed by a nice vacation at Genting from Monday onwards, something terrible happened...

It all started when Little Skywalker decided to put his naughty little finger on a touch-button on my notebook. He likes doing it all the time because it will let out a nice little beep sound. Normally, it doesn't cause much of a problem. The worst thing that happened was he caused the notebook to hang and had to be restarted. No biggy...

I was having a nap while J and Little Skywalker was playing games on the notebook. After I woke up, J told me that something was wrong with the notebook and it could not be started. Being an IT-savvy person, I was not quite worried at all. I took my own sweet time to turn on the PC and was thinking of our coming vacation at Genting.

The notebook did not boot into Windows like J said. I tried a few times and even did a full recovery of the operating system. After a couple hours of trying and debugging, I pressed the panic button. Worst case scenario, the hard disk went KO and I lost all my data plus a few months of photos taken (which I have no backup copy of). I almost ~~shouted at J and Little Skywalker~~ lost it but managed to keep my cool by explaining to J about the consequences of loosing those data. Most of it are my freelance projects, which is completed by not deployed (not to mention paid) to clients yet.

I did not sleep well that night and I woke up around 5.30am on Sunday morning, worrying about how to recover my data as well as explaining to my clients. In a desperate attempt, I brought my notebook and drove to my office. It is the only place where I could focus on the problem at hand and try to find a solution online. After another two hours of trying various sets of possible solutions, I finally decided to give up! I left the notebook in the office and called my colleague to have a look at it while I am on vacation.

Being a person who is always obsessed in finding a solution to every problem, it was very frustrating for me to let something went "unsolved" like that. Furthermore, this is the first computer-related problem that I failed to solve! And all it took was for Little Skywalker to lift one of his little fingers! Imagine the level of damage he would unleash to his parents when he grows up!

Like I said, I left the whole matter behind (along with the notebook) and went on with our vacation. My colleague called me on Monday afternoon to inform me that he is able to see the data on my hard disk after plugging it into his PC. However, he is still unable to boot up my notebook. It was a great relief for me because all I care was my work and our personal data. As for the notebook, it is still well under warranty.

As I came back to work yesterday, I copied out all the data from the hard disk before further attempts to resuscitate my notebook. Immediately after backing up all the data, I was inspired by something my colleague said. We tried it out and voila! My notebook boots up to its usual self again!

Lesson learnt:
ALWAYS BACKUP YOUR DATA BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE!!

Jotted down by Egghead :: at around 4/06/2007 09:00:00 AM :: and invited 18 Blah(s):