Date: Mon, 20 Oct 97 08:11:08 -0000
From: EvangeList <evangelist@apple.com>
Subject: Tidbit - And Now the Scary Part...

Keyword: Advocacy, Windows Daymares

This tidbit is from:

Stephen Kerkvliet

I received the email below from a friend of mine this last week. You 
gotta read it!

*************************************************************************

As you all have read, it's been fun lambasting Microsoft for the 
"undocumented features" in Windows 95.

Well, I don't think it's very funny anymore... Here's why.

Yesterday, my daughter called me at work. She was "stressed out." Those 
of you who know Stephie know what I'm talking about. She said "the 
computer won't do what it's supposed to do. It has a black screen and 
says S-A-F-E-M-O-D-E and I want to play Reader Rabbit and I just can't 
take it!" So, after talking her through a reboot sequence over the phone, 
(sound easy? just try it with a stressed out, impatient five-year-old 
sometime...) I decided it wasn't going to be that easy, so I told her to 
go color a picture for me and I'd fix it "right away" when I got home.

"Right away" turned out to be 1:30 this morning...

I don't know what happened. It could have been a power bump (thanks NSP!) 
or something in her game (not likely) or... maybe a Win95 SYSTEM.DAT or 
Registry-smashing sequence or ???

My PC is a 166 MHz Pentium machine I got (cheap) from Damark this Summer. 
It has run flawlessly for several months. (Probably 91 days, since that's 
one day more than the standard warranty) It comes with a CD that allows 
one to restore system files and take off running in no time flat. At 
least that's what they tell you.

What they don't tell you is that there are two recovery modes. The first 
is the publicly heralded "fast" recovery mode. Needless to say, I tried 
it, it restored "files" but couldn't recover the OS. The second mode is 
the "system recovery" mode. Let's just say it's a bit more extreme!

After failing several tries at a type "1" recovery, I determined the only 
thing that could save me was a type "2" recovery. The warning banner said 
that all info on "C" drive would be lost. I have all my data on "D", so I 
thought 'what the heck' and said 'ok' to the proverbial "are you sure" 
dialog. Munch, munch, whirrrr, tick, tick, tick, ... , gronk, bing! All 
done!

Not too bad, I thought to myself. A fresh image and everything looks 
good. I'll just check the "D" drive to make sure...

Guess what I said next!

Sorry, I can't repeat that here...

It seems that NEC thinks asking about C implies that it is OK to whack D 
at the same time.

:-(

All my data is gone. 500MB. *sniff* ... *sob*

AAAAAAAaaaaaaaarrrrrrrggggggghhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Fortunately, since this is a relatively new machine, I have floppy 
backups of about 50% of my new data, and I still have my 486 system next 
to it with all my old data still intact. I love Laplink. (whew!)

Now all I have to do is reload about a million applications.

The only thing I had time to reload so far was "Reader Rabbit's 
Kindergarten." Fitting, isn't it...