Computer Panic!

Not that many years ago I did not even own a computer! Now the little boxes have become so important to our lives that I seriously think everything would grind to a halt if anything happened to the data they contain. This morning I checked the status of my Norton Ghost backups and discovered that I had not backed up my desktop in almost a month. I usually try to do this every two or three weeks at the most so I was seriously behind schedule.

I opened Norton Ghost in preparation to imaging the hard drive and a box appeared suggesting there was no "C" drive! This is not possible as Windows is on "C" so how could the computer be running if "C" was in trouble? This was not a good situation. I restarted the computer a couple of times and tried again - same thing. It is booting fine from "C" but Norton is telling me there is no "C" drive! I "Googled" the error statement and was told it was likely a Bios problem. I know nothing about Bios problems. I had hit the brick wall at the end of my personal information highway.

I tried System Restore from Windows and went back a couple of weeks but that did nothing for me. I decided to try to use the Ghost image that was three weeks old but that means I would lose three weeks worth of data. I backed up everything I could think of as well as copying my "Documents" directory onto two external hard drives (can't be too careful), loaded my Ghost CD and started the process. Ghost 9 works in a DOS environment and I always get a little confused by it. It renames drives so you really have to be careful what instructions you give it. Well, it's now or never! Closing my eyes, I hit "enter" and it started doing it's thing. I can't stand watching it work so I went and made breakfast. When I finally dared to go back into the computer room, everything was working! AVG had downloaded a new virus database and Windows had done an update. All I had to do was restore my Quicken data and copy my new documents back onto the "C".

Just to test things out I did what had started the problem in the first place. I pretended to do a Ghost image. No warnings! It is working! Exhausted, I flopped into my Lazy-Boy and turned on the NASCAR race. Life Is Good. Again.