It had to happen. I'd spend the weekend pondering the backup of the laptop, knowing that once I'd got some DVD-RWs I'd get everything sorted and safe, at least as safe as a DVD can be. I'm good at backing up. Everything that's very important goes onto a CD or DVD on a regular basis.

Last night my laptop decided to throw a wobbler. My profile in WinXP was destroyed. Nothing major I first thought, the loss of the a few favourites and shortcuts. Looking around the PC though it also transpired that the Shared Documents folder had gone. Or rather it had been obliterated, leaving a couple of folders and no files behind.

I use the Shared Docs for all my downloads of whatever nature they are. Panic set in as I went through My Documents, fearing something horrific. It had remained though.

Various programs were showing some funny signs of not working correctly so today I decided that a full, fresh reinstall was in order. That's something I tend to do once as year anyway and since I've had the laptop a year today seemed like as good a day as any.

Everything was backed up to 5 DVDs. Then the boring bit comes.

Formatting a 60GB hard drive takes ages. Installing Windows takes far too long. It gets boring waiting for programs to install, the laptop to restart, more programs, updates, restarts, drivers, restarts, updates, programs.

Fortunately beer and football is a good way to pass the time while doing a re-install from scratch.

Finding half the CDs and DVDs became a pain. I spent an hour hunting down my WinXP CD. I knew I had it somewhere although it didn't stop me going through the bin bag I'd put in the dustbin on Monday. That turned up, strangely enough, with all the little bits and pieces I'd brought back from Australia.

Another minor panic when I couldn't find the serial number. Quite why it was on the bottom of the laptop I'm not sure. Then, just for good measure I wasn't asked for it. Nor have I activated or been reminded that I need to!

Everything now seems to be working.

All the html files are slowly copying back off their DVD, 1 hour and counting so far.

Even OneNote works now! Which is nice.

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