So I thought I had everything working with the Dell, more or less. I had XP on there which is a memory hog and runs slow on my notebook, but at least it runs. I could access my external hard drive. I could read my CF card to get my pictures. There were some program issues, like Photoshop not wanting to install, but for the most part, everything was hunky dory.

Then it all came unraveled in the most peculiar way.

I was trying to solve the Photoshop issue and I started by running an error check. It wouldn't run while the OS was working, so it "scheduled" an error check for the next time the PC started up. I never saw XP after that. The error check would run, and right when it was about to finish, the notebook would crash and it would start all over. This went on for at least a day and half.

Then, I said, fuck this, I'm just going to reinstall XP. I reformatted the drive (again) and before XP could go through the setup process, it tells me that some of the sectors are corrupt and unrepairable and the OS cannot be installed. How could that happen after a simple error check?

I restarted the notebook yesterday morning. It went through the error check thing again and actually finished right when I was going to bed last night (a miracle). Then it allowed me to reformat and reinstall, except the reformat is still going on. I know it shouldn't take this long. The drive is only 5 GB. I know something is seriously wrong, but what to do?

The simple answer is to buy a new computer. This would make me happy. I wouldn't have any serious problems for at least a few years and I'm already in debt up to my eyeballs with my car and all these new expenses so what's another grand?

Or I could go on eBay and buy myself a new hard drive for my crappy old notebook and probably have running like a champ for less than 150 bucks. It's a tough decision, because of that "probably." I don't want to be throwing good money away. I can't afford it these days. But I need a computer, at the very least so I can share my photography with you good people.