At the weekend I replaced the broken power connector on our old Toshiba SA30. I tidied it up, defragged it all and then applied the latest set of Microsoft patches.
Thats where it all went wrong – system just hung on reboot. Booting in safe mode it showed windows crapping out on mup.sys
Now as the Tosh comes with only a “product recovery” CD there is no access to the recovery console so its blat the disk and start again
So I go and dig out the “product recovery” CD.
Hmm, Toshiba obviously have a different interpretation of “recovery” than me because its a complete pigs breakfast. Stuff doesn’t work properly and its a complete pain.. two steps forward and three steps back.
I could I guess, get an OEM XP disk from work and key in the product code on the bottom of the laptop.
Or I could just wipe the whole damned thing and shove something like Ubuntu ( www.ubuntu.com ) or SLED ( www.novell.com/products/desktop/ )
Thats the problem Microsoft and the manufacturer lackeys – they make things so complicated when things go wrong that you just can’t be arsed trying to conform to their neo-fascistic ideas that you just say “sod it all” and ignore them.