h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

This morning, unable to get the COGS machine to run properly with SuSE 8.1 Linux, I headed off to try to download the Xandros Linux free install disc. Then I discovered that I couldn't use the BitTorrent image because my router wasn't forwarding the appropriate ports, and found that it would cost me £6 to download the image via HTTP. On a whim, I spent £44 on the "Professional" edition, with all the bells and whistles. The "interesting" T&C finally swung me - I can use it on *one* commercial/business PC (which is what I want it for) and *unlimited* home/leisure PCs! The download has turned out to be a bit of a bitch, but I finally got the first ISO about two hours ago. It only took me 6 hours.

By about 4pm I was in the process of organising a *major* defrag of this machine; I asked it to optimise the drive (using DiskKeeper 9.0 trial) and it warned me that "Proceeding will require a restart". OK, I thought; I finished what I was doing and clicked "Proceed".

I then got a dialogue box saying "Preparing to restart" or words to that effect, and a progress bar of asterisks. Except that after 20 (very slow) asterisks it went on to the next line... Six hours have gone past, and it's still going on with no indication of when it'll stop, and in the interim I can't start doing anything "important" in case it restarts in the middle. Bum.

Other than that, there's really nothing going on. I plan to watch "The Farm" in about 20 minutes, but knowing my luck that'll be when the big "Restart and Defrag" happens; I'm using the computer as my TV for the moment, as my freeview tuner is off for repair.

Apocalypse now, it gets worse and worse;

Mmmmmm..ac?

Update: It's getting on for 1:30am and it's still preparing to restart.

Traveller in Time wondering how much time a reinstall would take
"Can you find any way to see the progress? There must be something like top to please your curiosity. . ."

I can see that it's making progress, but there's no indication of when it will finish.

2:30am, still waiting...

I'm off to bed; I hope it's done by morning.

10:15am; just got up ; still waiting.

Traveller in Time counting hours
"Are you sure it is only some Yotta Byte disk space ?

This is the 'newly assembled system' with some Linux distribution ?
I would opt for breaking and starting all over again. There is definetely something wrong in the filesystem.

"

No, it's *this* machine, running Windows 2000 Professional. I'm installing DiskKeeper's "Frag Shield".


Still waiting...

10:40pm, still waiting.

Traveller in Time gladly spinning on 4G2 disks
"They only take an hour to checkup and defrag.

Are you sure the virusscanner is off ? As well as the auto repair functions by the operating system. "

It's expanding the MFT, and on the 160Gig drive that's taking a while.

Traveller in Time getting dizzy spinning
"Still the same while ? "

Yup.

Sincere condolences Peet. Gripping stuff.

Thanks. Still waiting.

9:25am, Saturday 14th. Still no sign of a reboot.

5:40pm, still waiting.

This is my first cyber-wake.

Traveller in Time counting down
"That would be about 600 000 Bytes per second processed. What was this program supposed to do with your system anyway?

Defragmentation, recovering of all deleted files and counting the improbability of ever useing a byte again ? "