Welp, that didn’t work so good.

Last night I decided to uninstall my Radeon 9800 Pro and try popping in the GeForce 6800GT that I borrowed from a colleague. Everything started up normally, but I forgot I had to go into safe mode and run Driver Cleaner and Cab Cleaner, so I restarted before logging in and booted to safe mode. Cleaned out the drivers, then rebooted. Logged in (running standard VGA drivers at 800×600), installed the latest nVidia Forceware drivers, and rebooted one last time.

After that, Windows wouldn’t start up anymore. After the Windows XP logo screen, the monitor usually goes dark and then the welcome screen comes up a second later. But the welcome screen never came up. I found I could boot into safe mode, but not…uh…”regular” mode. I’m not quite sure what this means. I haven’t updated my nForce drivers in eons, so I decided to blow them away too and will start by installing them tonight, then the Forceware drivers again.

If even that doesn’t work, I’ll have a choice: Either format and reinstall Windows from scratch, or just put the flippin’ 9800 Pro back in and be done with it. I’d like to do the former, especially because my OS is in need of a good housecleaning, but there are two things stopping me: I have work to do this weekened on that side project I mentioned yesterday, and I also wlll just have to reinstall all over again when I get my new machine built. And if I have to reinstall just two months down the road, the Windows XP activation crap might freak out and force me to call Microsoft, and I hate doing that because they always ask you retarded questions like they think you’re breaking the license agreement. The last time I called, the dude at MS actually asked me in his best Detective Anybody voice, “How many machines are you running this on, sir?” UH, GEE, I INSTALLED IT ON MY WHOLE SERVER FARM AND THEY’RE ALL DOWNLOADING A TORRENT OF EPISODE THREE RIGHT NOW. IS THAT BAD? Just one, asshole. Just one.

In other news, it’s been one hell of a busy week. I am really looking forward to tonight. We’re in the process of refinancing our house, which will actually cut our principal and interest payments in half each month. With that extra money, we’re going to get our Mazda6 loan paid off in no more than 20 months, instead of the 38 it would be if we just made the expected payments. And as Apple knows, I’m excited about that—it means a new car for me could come as early as Q1 2007 instead of Q3 2008!

But for tonight, I’m going to live for today. A good meal, some Voyager on TV, some good old fashioned messing around with the computer and a nice bike ride after dark. It sucks that I gotta get back to work during the weekend, but at least it’s money. Speaking of which: the bikini website guy dropped $300 in the mail for me today, and I should be getting $340 from my side project compatriots in about a week’s time. It’s all starting to roll in…