I feel dumb. Last night, Matthew was doing the Windows updates on his computer, which is only a 1½ years old. It crashed. It couldn't find the systems file.. Last night, I tried to restore XP. No luck. I tried a clean install. After a reboot from installation, his computer won't load Windows. When Windows loads after installation, it doesn't recognize anything. His computer only has 256 colors and no Internet. Today, I nearly 5 hours downloading Ubuntu Linux to install on his computer. Burned 2 discs. One as the ISO file directly and one as a bootable disc. No luck installing them at all. I'm going to burn one more disc to try tonight, this time with another program. Honestly, I think the hard drive on the computer is shot. We'll know something after trying to install this Linux setup.

As to why I feel dumb? I'm majoring in IT. Sure, I can write an HTML file from scratch, install Movable Type on a server, do a few other things most people can't do with a computer. However, I can't fix my brother's computer. I feel so dumb. I should be able to fix it!

Update 9:44 PM Ok, Got Ubuntu installed on Matthew's computer. Still can't get Windows XP to reinstall. However, Matthew's computer, with the Ubuntu, can now accesss the Internet. Better than nothing.

Update 10:04 PM Ubuntu has been updated. I told Matthew to play with it tonight. Set up Firefox like he likes. Worse case scenario, I might have a Linux box. I'll have to do some research on RAID tomorrow in my OS book. As Ubuntu was installing, there was an error message about RAID. I sure wish I knew more about computers.

Posted by Shawn at June 30, 2006 8:46 PM in General.