The first format was just a simple crash at the very beginning of the Windows install. No big deal, I almost expect it these days.

Friday night I went through my second format. This time I wrote down each and every step I took. For future reference, ya know. Turns out this was the smartest thing I've done in a while. Maybe.

(From my notes...)

• Windows Setup. about 15 minutes.
• Detected Printer at the end of setup, but didn't bother to install.
• Motherboard: Sound, Modem and Network installed.
• Fix network settings and get needed files off old computer.
• Video Card Adapter. update display settings.
• Paint Shop Pro.
• Trackball software. change trackball settings to my prefs.
• Star Office. (ignore all errors.)
• Earthlink. install, dialup, copy dialup to a DUN file, reboot and delete the worthless, system hogging Earthlink software which does a good job of slowing my 850mHz super-computer to a crawl. (ignore the single blue screen of death that happened during the install.)
• Eudora.
• Change settings on IE and Netscape. (Netscape crashed several times when I tried to change the bookmark file. Then IE died. Then the Windows registry crapped out again. And then I got annoyed and pushed in my startup disk and typed in that nice FORMAT command again. And then I went to bed.)

I decided I could live without my trackball software. Without the software installed, the trackball itself works just fine. The speed of the pointer is a little bit different, and I can't set my buttons like I usually have them. But I really can't live without my free Office software. I don't use it as often as I use my trackball, obviously, but when I do use Star Office, it's important. So I hoped and hoped it was the trackball software that was causing the problem. (The third option is to unplug the trackball and plug in a mouse. But really, playing with a computer mouse is not my idea of fun, but rather the height of frustration.)

This morning, very early, I went through the two hour process again. This time installing the printer and scanner. And avoiding that trackball software like it was a virus or something, ha. And have had absolutely no problems.

So far, that is.

Well, except for the fact that I forgot to back-up my IE Favorites before I did the format thing. I always forget, and it always annoys me. It's easy to get around the problem in Netscape, you just make sure your bookmark.htm file is on a different partition. But you can't do that with IE, your Favorites are stuck forever in the C:\Windows directory.

And, yes, I do use both the IE and Netscape browsers. At the same time, no less. :)