Yes, i'm quite aware of the fact that a good deal of these problems probably wouldn't bother me so if i (Used another Operating System/video card/species of sacrificial chicken), but i don't and therefore i get to pay the price.
What's happened is that somewhere, amidst a mouse driver upgrade, a security patch and a new version of City of Heroes, something when horribly wrong. Now, i can't start City of Heroes, Thunderbird occasionally won't start either, and i've blown most of the past 24 hours or so rebooting, staring at blue screens and cursing.
Things are sorta-kinda back together, with the exception that i still can't run City of Heroes, i get the lingering feeling that i'm still running an old video driver and Thunderbird only starts after i run Firefox, or if i start it in "safe mode" (XPCOM is hanging on me and i've no idea how to go about debugging that.)
i really don't want to do yet another fresh install.
(Oh yeah, Debian STILL doesn't want to talk to my network cards, so it's still far less useful for me to mess around with.)
i'm beginning to see the allure of console systems. Say what you will about them, they simply work.
Ah, well, there's always the opportunity to go watch stuff go boom tonight. i'll post pictures if they come out looking ok.
Ok, i figured it out.
i'm not particularly happy about it, but i figured it out.
Turns out that what happened was during one of the upgrades, one or more of the SP4 files got hammered. Windows, apparently, doesn't check those files to see if they're up-to-date, so it kept on reporting that "Yeah, you're up to date!"
In fact, i wasn't.
i had to go directly to the microsoft site and download the standalone SP4 updater, and run it before things were back to being more "up-to-date" than they were before.
*grumble*
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Ghostbear2004-07-04 20:28:44Well, i watched stuff go boom, and when it ended came home. It was at this time (That would be 11 in the night) that my neighbours felt it would be prudent to enjoy the last hour of Independence day with fireworks. Ever heard 20 black cats go off together? its fun-for your headache.
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Lynne2004-07-05 05:46:38I've been trying to get an old win98 system to recognize a 56k modem all week. It's been hell on earth. Such a simple little task, such a headache.
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Lanky Matt2004-07-05 08:06:05It doesn't help, but i've been having XPCOM failing to close every time i've used my PC, pretty much since the time i bought it. I still have no idea what causes the problem. As for city of heroes, have you checked the directx version numbers? i've seen a few blue-screening PC's with a mix of various version 8 and version 9.0b directx dll's being there, and not being able to remove the version 8 dll's to get back to a vanilla directx 9 setup. Just my tuppence worth ;)
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Ghostbear2004-07-05 10:45:46Hope you had a backup... I'd check that security patch-I've had issues with upgrade patches supposed to beef up security for Win/Norton/Etc. and each time something loses it. About the Dx, I think theres a troubleshoot 'bout it now...
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jr2004-07-05 12:26:21Yeah, I really should listen to the tiny voice in my head about upgrading, but you know me... Matt: That's a damn fine point about Dx. I'll grab a copy of 9.0b and reapply it, but DxDiag comes back with pretty current stuff. As for the XPCOM, I uninstalled firebird and mozilla, restarted to flush the loaded memory and then reinstalled everything. I still have to start thunderbird in "safe-mode" for whatever reason, but it starts.
