Can't decide what console to get? No problem.. Here's a handy chart! (Courtesy of the Penny Arcade forums)

I'm not sure I've mentioned this before, but for quite a while now I've been enjoying free games courtesy of Kongregate.com.

One of my favorites is Desktop Defense, in which lemming like creatures go across the screen, and you have to place towers to shoot them before they make it across. Its free, fun, and doesn't take a whole lotta time.

Usually, I don't much care for pie. But this is awesome.

The Booby Wall.

Naturally, I approve.

Last week was not a good week for my computer. This tale is a gauntlet of suck. And a long one, which is partly why I'm telling it a week later. Also, this didn't all happen at once. Fixing it wasn't my top priority however, so the suckage simmered for 4 days over the holiday while I occasionally had between 30 min and 2 hours to work on the issue.

Let's begin with my setup.
Windows XP, 300GB hard drive (split into 3 roughly even NTFS partitions), DVD RW, and a external 40Gb drive.

• C: is my main boot, system, and games drive. ~93.1 GB
  
• D: is the DVD-RW (Can't find a link for this BTC-1008IB sucker).
• E: is the 2nd partition. It's where I keep all my stuff. ~93.7 GB
  
• F: is the 3rd partition. It's where I keep all my crap. ~92.5 GB
• And some letter later is my external drive. My DVD-RW has a built in 5-in-1 memory card reader, as does the external drive case, so I never know which drive letter is which.
  

(Yes, I realize that my 3 partitions don't add up to 300GB. That's just the way formatted file systems go)

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I don't know how, when, or why, but all of a sudden I got a pop-up application in my taskbar saying I had spyware. The name of this app was Awola. Not only did it update itself with new "protection", but it also started scanning my drives. It almost looks legit, and after scanning my drives it found a few malware/spyware apps and some other stuff, but not a virus. This was not a good thing. I quickly disconnected myself from the network and used my laptop to check into it. Apparently its linked with a trojan virus and is very difficult to remove. I followed the link's advice, and also ran Trend Micro's online scanner, Housecall (since its free, fast, and fairly effective, in my experience).

I couldn't get rid of it. I tried force quitting apps, deleting executables, uninstalling crap, Booting into safe mode... nothing worked. At this point I instructed Violet to disconnect her PC from the network (Naturally, her Mac wasn't in any danger), just in case. I ran Housecall on my laptop as well, and it was clean. I did a few windows updates, but that didn't work either. I was hosed.

When smart people do dumb things, stupid results occur.
I decided to format and reinstall Windows. I had installed XP on my system, like, well over a year ago, so I was probably due for a reinstall anyway. I backed up my important docs on my other 2 drives, E: and F: (which are part of the same hard drive.. do you see where this is going?)

Dumb people do dumb things:
After I booted to the XP CD, as a reflex habit from doing this so many times, I deleted my C: partition, created a new one with the max remaining size, quick formatted it, and installed Windows. No problem. Then I tried accessing my E: and F: Drives. They didn't exist. Mmm.. that's not good. Must be a Windows issue. I did the updates, service packs, etc.. All was fine. Still no drives. Not good for our hero.

Careless people do careless things:
So I booted the Windows CD again and started over again. Same result. Like, Duh. I kinda sorta remembered something about Windows not seeing really big drives, and after a quick search on Google, I remembered that I had to go into the Windows Disk Management Tool (Which is not intuitively placed) There I saw some avail space, but the numbers were off, and there was only one. I figured 1 partition was better than none at this point, so I clicked on it and set it up. This didn't seem right to me, but it had been so long since I'd done any of this, and I didn't have a lot of free time to really think about it, so I just did it anyway.

Stupid people do stupid things:
That, of course, didn't work. So I quick formatted it. That didn't work anything either. Then I reinstalled windows from scratch a third time, and this time I did a full format instead of a quick format. Needless to say, this didn't solve my problem.

At some point I remembered the Master Boot Record.
Man, did I screw THAT up through all this. Things were not looking good, and they'd get worse...

Crazy people do crazy things:
At some point I finally realized that the partition I was formatting during the XP install was 131 GB. Since my partition was less than that, I found this to be a bad thing. I decided to start over completely, and deleted ALL of my partitions. The data was still on the drives, I just couldn't access it. So I didn't think this was too bad a thing at the time. Time to break out the hacker toolbox...

Desperate people do desperate things:
What I needed to do at this point was get my partitions back in place. I searched and downloaded several partition programs, but none of them did what I needed to have done. Either they were demos, couldn't restore lost partitions, or were too complicated to use.
I eventually found a link to Testdisk 6.8 on an Ultimate Boot CD forum. It searched and found around 6 lost partitions. I had no idea what my drive geometry was, so I guessed. I figured there was a decent chance I had lost everything at this point anyway. I soon ended up with screwed up drive geometry and very weird, very incorrect, partition information. I also couldn't boot using the Window XP CD anymore. Very bad. After fiddling with this program for well over a day, I eventually figured out how things were originally setup.

Then I tried to install XP again. Even with the partitions seemingly correct, XP would only partition and format to a single 131GB chunk. Mmm... that's interesting. I didn't continue installing XP... instead I took the time and effort to do some web research.

Smart people do dumb, careless, stupid, crazy, and desperate things all at once.
To make this long story shorter, I won't go into that whole ordeal. Suffice to say that I ended up using Bart's Preinstalled Environment(BartPE). It's pretty awesome. AND it saw all my drives. Now that I had access to my E: and F: drives, I backed up what files I really needed to my external drive.

So BartPE saw my drives. I tried the Window XP Boot CD again. No luck. Something strange was amiss. Turns out that the original (Pre-SP1) Windows XP install CDs don't recognize partitions larger that 32GB. Pretty stupid. Well, that's bad. I searched and found my other Window XP install CD (I have 2 legal copies.. one for my PC and one for Violet's PC). Using her install CD didn't work either. Sad Panda :(

More research. I discovered from Paul Thurrott's SuperSite that I had to "slipstream" Service Pack 2 onto a new Windows Boot+Install CD. Problem was, I didn't have any burn software to create a bootable CD. More downloads of demos and programs that didn't work. I eventually found my copy of Nero, but it's tied to the device I purchased it with. I tried oldversion. com, but that didn't help me too much. Not knowing if this would even solve my problem, I mostly followed Paul's advice, and used the following:

• Bart's PE Builder, to boot to the PC and run the Testdisk program.
  
• ISO Buster, used to extract out the Windows Bootable image file.
• AShamoo Burning Software , to create the Bootable CD with windows on it.
  

The CD I made didn't boot. I wasted a 2nd CD trying to make another copy of it. Third time's the charm though. I booted to CD with Windows XP and slip-streamed SP2. It saw my partition at the correct size! I eagerly installed Windows, and this time SP2 was built in, which would save me from having to download and install it again. Turns out you can slipstream lots of stuff into a Windows XP installer. Anyway, that's my tale, as best I can remember it, with as short as I care to make it. If you've read down this far, you're really bored.