Tomorrow is an acid test of sorts, with my reputation as a computer-fix-it-person hanging in the balance. Somehow my calling as hobbyist hardware geek slipped out, and as a result my first patient will be an aging VAIO desktop with a misaligned installation of Windows ME that needs correction.

The prognosis is good, although somewhat risky. The owner is a neighbor and coworker, who suffers a split-second BSOD (and by that I don’t mean the default WinME background color 😉 ) before a forced reboot. It happens so fast that you can’t even read the error message. And I really can’t read the error message, since it’s Japanese.

By some strange stretch of luck, I actually have a pressed edition of WinME, and I’m going to give it the chance to fix itself, if it can. First I have to get some or all of the files off the hard drive, to avoid the risk of data loss. I’d feel bad if we couldn’t fix it; I’d feel worse if her handouts and photos were destroyed in the process.

But that’s the legacy of Millenium Edition. Crappy software that couldn’t work, and thousands upon thousands of people stuck with crippled hardware as a result. I might give her a default installation of Xubuntu, just to see if she likes it, but we’ll see how that goes. It’s a comfort issue. Too-much-too-new-too-fast is a bad way to be introduced to Linux. Maybe a dual boot is an option.

Regardless, I have a good feeling about it. The only issue is time. You see, I checked earlier this week, and unless I’m mistaken, it’s running at 233Mhz.

Hoo boy. This could take a while. Better bring a book. 😳