Looks nice, but where are the icons?

I think it’s finally happened – my desktop computer’s C: drive is almost certainly hosed.

I probably precipitated it a couple of days ago when I ran a free registry cleaner in the hope of eliminating the 60+ minute boot-up lag. I also uninstalled Dell Remote software that makes it possible for me to run programs on the desktop computer remotely from my netbook – Dell’s version of Go To My PC. The uninstall took more than an hour.

When I rebooted, I found my monitor would display only the wallpaper picture of my granddaughter Lisa. No icons, no Start button, nothing else. I could still launch Windows Task Manager by hitting Ctl+Alt+Delete, and it told me that pretty much nothing was going on in the background. It makes for an elegantly clean desktop, but it’s also completely useless.

I ran Spinrite6 in the vain hope of sorting things out, but to no avail.

How curious that this would coincide with the grand opening this weekend of our local Best Buy and with the release today of Windows 7.

I bought a 500GB hard drive some months ago with the idea of making it the new C: drive and installing Windows XP on it. I started the process but was alarmed to discover my computer assigned a different name. I think it was K: or L: (I have several external hard drives connected by USB cables). I gave up and decided to limp along a little longer with my crippled system.

Now events have conspired to force me into a real solution. I’m pretty sure all of the data on my C: drive is recoverable – it’s just the operating system that is hosed. So far.

Installing XP is the easy part. Downloading and installing the subsequent updates through Service Pack 3 and beyond will be the real hassle, probably involving about 1,000 tedious reboots. So, against my better instincts, I’m thinking about starting fresh with a Windows 7 install.

Yes, I know that only a dumbass jumps on a new operating system before the public has had a few months to find most of the problems. So do I want to be a pioneer with Windows 7 Home Premium ($119) or Windows 7 Professional ($199) – the $219.99
Windows 7 Ultimate doesn’t add enough features to be worth the extra expense to me – or do I resign myself to several days of fiddling with XP updates?