Self Treachery

I spent many hours building a computer from scratch for my uncle at my father's request. Just on old PII 400/128MB/6.4GB with Win98SE, nothing fancy. When I was finally finished, I used the built-in Windows Backup to backup the entire system, just in case. Since this backup took up about a CDs worth of space when compressed, I then used a cross-over cable to get that data to another machine to burn to CD.

That turned out to be an error.

I had previously disabled the built-in ethernet port for reasons which I won't get into here, and (apparently) by re-enabling it to transfer the data, the system's connection profiles got all jacked up. I tried one last test dial-up before giving the go to box it up, and that failed. The thing persistenly dropped connections after negotiating them.

So you're thinking, "just restore that backup you made", right? Well, taking a full system backup from within Windows is NOT quite the same as imaging a machine for backup purposes. I did try a restore, but that jacked up as much as it corrected. Lesson: Full backup/restore good for data, bad for hardware profiles.

So after dinking with it for awhile (much of which turned out to be a waste of time), I removed the modem, disabled the ethernet card, removed all signs of networking (dial-up or otherwise) and started over with the modem. Once I got that working, I removed myself from the vicinity of that computer and told my dad to box it up.