Surviving the blue screen of death!

I like cleaning up; Aside from the usual daily routine, my PC inherits that habit too. In fact I run cleanup utilities everyday at startup and before shutdown. And that’s not just it, I have more than 5 cleanup utilities installed so you could just imagine how squeaky clean this big chunk of hardware is. But this morning things got a little off hand, I was searching for stray .dll files (critical files needed to run certain WinXP applications) that were taking up space in my hard drive. These stray .dll files were supposed to be remnants of previous uninstalled applications but unfortunately there are circumstances when Windows fails to cleanup its own mess. So as my cleanup program showed a list of suspected stray and unused files, I accidentally deleted a critical file still in use. But I was thinking “hey I have the Windows XP CD so if I deleted a windows-dependent file I could always copy it from there anytime, easy.” Or I thought it was. So I chose to let the program “archive all” (not delete) and move the files to a single compressed folder where it will be taking up lesser space like the Recycle Bin. Just as I suspected, after the deletion Windows prompted me to insert the Windows XP CD because I accidentally deleted an important system file. And then it happened, what every PC user feared, before I could reach for my Windows CD, the blue screen! Meaning Windows crashed, Arggh! Fast forward, a couple of hours later after I ran a couple of disc diagnostics and attempting to recopy the system files from the CD without luck, I decided to run it on safe mode, which should have been any PC user’s first instinct after a Windows failure. So I cringed from the boot screen to the log on screen while crossing my fingers and impatiently waited. As I began to peek through my narrowing eyelids I noticed that all my startup programs were loaded, almost there… and then… No blue screen!! Phew! I ran that utility program right away and restored all the previously archived files, I was safe for now but I'm never going to be too careless with those Windows directory files again.

Sometimes paying too much attention to detail could be troublesome; start with the simple steps then build up to the more complicated ones, its much easier that was. =)