User:Entropy3927

[http://wiki.guildwars.com/index.php?title=User%3AVili%2Fwtf%3F&diff=1463732&oldid=1463717 Emily Diehl signed my wtf chain. Why haven't you?]



My new desktop. Yes, I know that if this was GWW I would be required to re-upload it with all potential copyrighted symbols and identifying things smudged out. But this isn't GWW. (Eat that, Indochine.)

I think the best computer crashes are the ones that happen when you don't expect them...things just break even when you've done nothing out of the ordinary. One boot-up, everything is fine, the next...it's gone! Just like investing into foreign securities.

The good news is that none of my files are lost. Everything is still there. The bad news is that no one knows wtf happened or how to fix it. It just seems like the computer "forgot" my user profile and so it reset all the settings - on everything - to Vista default. This includes loading the "public" desktop which all users see, instead of "mine". Which is retarded because I am the only user of this computer, and the designated administrator no less.

So while I battle to undo all the shitty Vista-fication which took me forever to get right in the first place, I probably won't be online that much. It's even a hassle to get on IRC or anything, because instead of a nice shortcut on my desktop I have to open Windows Explorer, go to C:\\Users\ \Desktop\... I have trouble doing any srs work for anything, because all "Save file" locations go to the default places now - the new "public" areas, where none of my stuff is. All products from Adobe freeze up. (Well, they do that anyway, but not this often.) It was even a pain to make this screenshot, because Vista removed "Bitmap" from the list of "New" things one can make from a right-click. So I had to go to my real desktop to find the shortcut to get to MS Paint. And then Photoshop to resize it. And then I had to manually type in the address for GuildWiki because it reset all Internet settings including cookies and cache.

I hate Vista. What have I ever done to you? >.> It's not fair how I have 150 GB on this hard drive, and yet even without anything loaded on the computer, you take up 50 GB all by yourself. Fuck that.

...well, okay, the only "bad" thing I ever did was perhaps constantly run under low free space. You know how they say you ought to have 20% of the hard drive free for optimal system performance? (30 GB for me) Well, that's unrealistic... because I've never really had more than 20 GB free, and Guild Wars + WoW + other stuff took that down to like 1 GB free. So yeah, maybe I should have expected something bad to happen sooner. But still...... I didn't really have a choice. Most of the stuff loaded on this computer is essential, whether it's games or programs like Photoshop I use often. The hard drive is just not big enough, I guess. And even after I made some emergency clean-ups by trimming stuff, I still only have 10-15 GB free, and things are still broken. Sooo......

I would like to say one thing, though. A fully patched Guild Wars takes up maybe 5 GB maximum, with the .DAT file around 3.5 for me. A fully patched WoW, by comparison, takes up at least 10 GB. If I actually had the full game with all expansions and stuff, I've heard it gets even bigger. So one thing I'll have to say in favor of Guild Wars is that for underpowered gamers like me, it's less taxing on system resources.

Of course, WoW never crashed on my crappy NVIDIA card, so... >.>



Update
So it turns out this was the result of my user profile file getting corrupted. If that happens, it loads a temporary default profile where it won't save any settings. Apparently this is a pretty normal occurrence, there's not much you can do to avoid it other than just generally not being stupid with your computer. (e.g. don't ever use "Hibernate" mode) It's good that I know what the problem is now. Unfortunately, there is no real way to fix the problem. The only "solution" people have been able to do is either a) load an old Restore Point (I don't have any old enough) or b) construct a whole new User Profile and move everything to the new one, give it the same permissions, etc. It's a fairly complicated thing to do...but we'll get it done somehow. Ah well. It looks like I'll be back online and all fixed up after the weekend.

I can't wait for Windows 7. It's supposed to be pretty good. Hopefully it doesn't have stupid bugs like this. Poke says you should never upgrade to a new OS on your only working machine, but...meh. I'd like to have a working computer before I go back to college. :|