computer woes

[eimarra]

Husband and six-year-old have been playing Lara Croft games. Tomb Raider 4 did not run well on husband's PowerBook using Classic under Tiger. When I got my G4, I got a dual-boot system. So we tried putting TR4 on the OS 9 partition. Success!

Worked so well, we tried doing the same with Baldur's Gate. But last time we did Baldur's Gate, there was a trick to the installation so you could just run it with one disk in the computer, instead of having to change disks all the time. That wasn't working. Husband decided to uninstall and try again.

Evidently, the Baldur's Gate uninstaller believes in the slash-and-burn approach.

Yes, the Baldur's Gate folder was deleted. So was the Applications (Mac OS 9) folder.

So was the Applications folder.

Nothing else was harmed. He hooked up his laptop to the G4 and copied my Documents and other stuff over to the Time Capsule. (Yes, I wish I had backed up the computer. No question about it. But most people don't back up their applications anyway.) So for now, I'm working on his laptop. Most of what I *need* is covered by Safari and Word, though I do need to get my Virtual PC/SKY Index back. He's working on finding someone who can recover an utterly vanished Applications folder.

Meanwhile, I'm here but not here. I'll probably fire up iChat, but won't be downloading Yahoo Messenger (or Adium, which is what I normally use) to his computer.


And, yes, I told him that after we get this straightened out, I want to get Leopard so I don't have to worry about something like this happening again.

Comments

[temporus.livejournal.com]

Ack. That's horrible. I hope you can recover.

[slobbit.livejournal.com]

Wow. That is extremely Bad Behavior for an application.

I wonder if I can replicate that . . . on one of the kid's computers . . .

[eimarra]

I believe my husband referred to it as "psychotic."

on one of the kid's computers . . . Heh.

If you do replicate it, I'd be interested in any recovery steps you manage.

[slobbit.livejournal.com]

Well, not likely any time soon, as today is the only day off I have this week.

Archive and Install is your friend here, obviously -- with just applications gone, you should still have a recognizable System.

Sheez, talk about crappy, tho.

[eimarra]

I think the System's there, although the computer won't boot. (No Finder?) Honestly, I was hoping there might be a way to recover the Applications folder, so I don't have to hunt down all the CDs and updates and constantly wonder whether I've forgotten something I wanted to install. Maybe something like Disk Warrior?

[slobbit.livejournal.com]

Maybe something that will do an erased file recovery, but the problem is you don't just need files, you need files in a particular relationship to other files, which those types of recovery don't do.

You probably have no way around archive and install, unless the uninstaller just put things in the trash.

[eimarra]

If it just put them in the trash, we could've gotten around that already. DiskWarrior claims, "DiskWarrior resolves existing disk damage by rebuilding your disk directory using data recovered from the original directory, thereby recovering files and folders that you thought were lost." I thought that sounded like something useful, assuming that the uninstaller didn't write over everything, but just erased the entries for the Application folder in the directory. (I didn't think it was working long enough to do anything elaborate.)

But that's not going to work here? *sigh*

[eimarra]

Sorry; my replies have probably sounded very ungrateful for your suggestion. I just feel like I have this great big gaping hole, and I want the disaster to have never happened, and part of me fears that it's somehow going to get worse, and I was just hoping for some sort of magic wand to make it all go away. Not very practical of me, but there it is.

I am sorry for not being more respectful.

[slobbit.livejournal.com]

It's okay -- people get funny when their computers are down. It's nothing I don't have to deal with every day. I appreciate your apology, though, and I hope you're feeling better now.

[ca-bookwyrm.livejournal.com]

That seems really strange. Huh. Wonder why it did that?

On a side note, I like Adium too. Though the alert to let you know when a message arrives - the little duck guy flapping his wings at you - really just cracks me up.

[marfisk]

HUGS! How scary and all in an attempt to be nice. Sigh. Glad your stuff is safe though.

[(Anonymous)]

Hm, so THAT is why I haven't seen you around. And here I thought you were just nose-to-the-grindstone.

Hugs, and hope all is not lost. Seriously. Valerie

[eimarra]

Trying to work, yes, but not as nose-to-the-grindstone as I should be, as trying to work on hubby's laptop has thrown all my usual patterns off.

Hope to be back around soon.