Computer woes

[robotech_master]

My computer has been growing more and more unstable over the last few days, ever since I had the bright idea to clean out every file in my Windows temp directory. I'm not sure why Windows should complain at those files being cleared out; I rather thought that the very idea of a temp directory was to put unimportant stuff in it.

Anyway, I think I'm at the point where I need to reformat and reinstall Windows. I just have one little problem: I don't have any way of backing the current contents of the thing up in order to do a slash and burn Windows reinstallation. I have 30 gigs of mp3s alone on the thing.

What I would like to do would be to get a new, bigger hard drive—there's a 350 gig drive for $90 on NewEgg.com—and slap it into my computer, relegate my current 80 gig to slave status, install anew on the 350, then pull everything I need off the 80…but I barely have the money to stay ahead of my bills right now.

Regardless, I need my computer to be stable, as it's what I'm using for business purposes for my podcasts right now. I need to be able to phone in and run my Talkcasts with it, and as it grows increasingly less stable, I'm increasingly unsure whether I can do anything about it.

This is really frustrating. I wish I had a really good webcomic or something that I did so I could post a plea for money and have people send it to me. :P I suppose I could put a plea out on my Robotech podcast, though I don't know if enough people who would be willing to donate listen to it to make a difference, and it seems kind of tacky to me anyway. Sigh.

Comments

[blacksnail.livejournal.com]

Which OS? I don't know if XP does it, but ever since way back you have been able to install Windows over itself, essentially, to get it back to its default settings for the core stuff. This usually clears up instability issues caused by accidentally screwing up system files.