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Digital Culture

Stupid freaking Windows XP

  • Lesson One: An untimely reboot will cause write errors.
  • Lesson Two: Said write errors, if they occur on the account info of Windows XP, are bad.
  • Lesson Three: Being unable to read any account info, Windows XP will happily blue screen and reboot, only to repeat that process forever.
  • Lesson Four: Even after editing the password file with a Linux boot disk in hopes of fixing the corruption…no dice.
  • Lesson Five: Backup your data, boys and girls. Early and often. Luckily I only lost a handful of files, and spent only most of a weekend reinstalling everything.

By griffey

Jason Griffey is the Director of Strategic Initiatives at NISO, where he works to identify new areas of the information ecosystem where standards expertise is useful and needed. Prior to joining NISO in 2019, Jason ran his own technology consulting company for libraries, has been both an Affiliate at metaLAB and a Fellow and Affiliate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, and was an academic librarian in roles ranging from reference and instruction to Head of IT at the University of TN at Chattanooga.

Jason has written extensively on technology and libraries, including multiple books and a series of full-periodical issues on technology topics, most recently AI & Machine Learning in Libraries and Library Spaces and Smart Buildings: Technology, Metrics, and Iterative Design from 2018. His newest book, co-authored with Jeffery Pomerantz, will be published by MIT Press in 2024.

He has spoken internationally on topics such as artificial intelligence & machine learning, the future of technology and libraries, decentralization and the Blockchain, privacy, copyright, and intellectual property. A full list of his publications and presentations can be found on his CV.
He is one of eight winners of the Knight Foundation News Challenge for Libraries for the Measure the Future project (http://measurethefuture.net), an open hardware project designed to provide actionable use metrics for library spaces. He is also the creator and director of The LibraryBox Project (http://librarybox.us), an open source portable digital file distribution system.

Jason can be stalked obsessively online, and spends his free time with his daughter Eliza, reading, obsessing over gadgets, and preparing for the inevitable zombie uprising.

2 replies on “Stupid freaking Windows XP”

i’ve seen no reason to go to win xp. win 2k churns along, and i’ve only ever had problems with other people’s computers on xp. got to say, if ibm would sell their x-40 laptop with a preconfigured, tested distro of linux, i’d snatch it up immediately. gonna have to wait for 2006+ for the next incarnation of windows. i’m wondering how many end users they’re hemorrage to flavors of linux as a result? or macs.

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