Failed, failed, failed...

Like a lot of things, I take a huge interest in using computers and will happily talk to you for hours about HTML and software, but couldn’t really care less about how they work underneath.

A few years ago I was given a computer which was apparently more powerful than my current one – and that’s a good thing, I guess – so I accepted it and thought about how I could make transferring my data as convenient as humanely possible. Absolutely everything on my computer, no matter how petty – even down to the order of my bookmarks on Firefox – has been done because that’s how I like it, and I don’t want to have to worry about organising things again.

In the end, I came up with an idea that is incredibly stupid. Do not try this at home.

I decided I would copy the majority of the data on my hard drive and, with a few registry changes, all would be well. And in general it was, until I tried to use something.

It turns out that, despite me thinking I was being really clever, very little of the software would copy successfully. The good thing was that as I had the majority of the software on there, I could repair things as and when they were needed. But some programmes, like Adobe Reader, would refuse to run because they’re not installed, refuse to install because they are already on there, and refuse to uninstall because they haven’t been formally installed.

Windows Update is a pain in itself!

Every time I turn the computer on, Windows Update tries to update the .NET Framework, and fails for the same reason as Adobe Reader won’t run. Every day I watch Windows Update run, attempt to install and then fail, and I never stop it because I hope one day the problem will magically fix itself. Occasionally it does – and then a new one crops up!

So I’m not asking for help as much as I am warning you not to try to be clever and invent shortcuts. You’ll only regret it.

Ooh, Windows has found some updates..!

I write all sorts of absolute tosh. Here’s some more of it.