Last night, my McAfee icon in the system tray popped up with “Restart Computer to Apply Updates,” or something like that. After I clicked to restart, I got a pop-up that said I needed to terminate or debug a program that was closing. I chose debug, which was apparently the wrong choice when you are restarting to update McAfee. There were several flashes on the screen and then the fatal error message, along with “Windows has shut down.” I tried rebooting and a couple of other things, which required me to reboot each time they didn’t work. It would show Windows XP, then flash to the same blue screen and fatal error message. Needless to say, I did not get a good night’s sleep.
This morning, I spoke with Kim, our IT gal at work. She told me to bring in my hard drive; she would see if she could salvage any of the data (backups from now on). As I explained how it happened, she told me to first try F8 and choose Last Known Good Configuration (or something like that). I went home, did the F8 thingy, then closed my eyes and listened to the computer; I was too nervous to watch. If it continued to make booting noises after a few seconds, I was probably in the clear. Yea, I could hear it working! I opened my eyes, saw a black screen, and quickly shut them, hoping that I had just looked too soon. About 15 seconds later I opened them again and saw…Starting Windows XP! And directly after that, my login screen popped up! Hurray, Kim and F8 saved my computer! I am looking forward to a well rested night.
Better to Laugh 
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