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Message-ID: <1es6jvn.1fxot4h1q2rqq2N%jwgh@earthlink.net>
Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology
Subject: Re: Computer problem
From: "Jacob W. Haller" <jwgh at earthlink.net>
Date: Fri, 20 Apr 2001 20:45:44 -0400

And knowing is half the battle. <lots42 at aol.comaol.com> wrote:

I can't defrag because it keeps saying the contents of the hard drive has changed. Yet ALL extra programs have been closed down.1

Top Ten Ways to Defrag a Hard Drive:2

  1. Restart in safe mode, then defrag.3
  2. Using a screwdriver and whatever other tools are available, dissassemble the hard drive. Sort the bits into two piles, one consisting of zeroes and the other of ones, and replace sorted bits on the drive.
  3. Shoot it with a shotgun, then wait for it at a respawn point.4
  4. Get a Mac.5
  5. Reboot using an operating system on another hard drive and run the defragmenting utility of your choice.6
  6. Compress hard drive's contents and post to a binaries newsgroup asking for someone to defrag the hard drive for you. Make sure you get the right one back when they're done!7
  7. Back up to multiple CDs, reformat hard drive, copy everything back one file at a time.8
  8. Use Python! It's easier than Perl!9
  9. Roll hard drive flat with a rolling pin until it is of a uniform smoothness and density.
  10. Find an old version of Norton Utilities with a disk editor and optimize it by hand. Or are you some kind of wimp?

-jwgh 

-- 
"We're the technical experts. We were hired so that management
could ignore our recommendations and tell us how to do our jobs."
   -- Mike Andrews in alt.sysadmin.recovery 10 October 2000
        <eUJE5.880$ln6.119642@news.flash.net>

Annotations

  1. This is a pretty common problem with Windows 95 and probably later versions of the Windows operating system: when you run the built-in defragementer, it tends to go for a little while, then complain that something has changed the hard drive and restart.

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  2. I should note that top ten lists are not very common on ark, nor do they seem to be very well-regarded in general. This top ten list may indicate why.

    (But what the hell, I'm Allowed.)

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  3. This suggestion should actually work, or at least it's what I did back in the day when I used a computer that ran Windows 95.

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  4. The respawn point terminology comes from first-person shooter games like Doom and Quake. When you're playing in multiplayer mode, generally when you're killed you are immediately (or almost immediately) ressurrected at one of a few set points in the game. These spots are called 'respawn points'.

    If you kill someone in one of these games it's called a frag, so the joke here was that respawn points could be considered places where people are de-fragged.

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  5. Many though by no means all Kibologists own or use Macs, and Get a Mac has for some time been what some Kibologists recommend as a solution for almost any problem. Macs are in fact not afflicted with the particular problem Lots42 is afflicted with here, if only because they don't have a built-in defragmenter.

    The catch phrase appears to have popped up from time to time for a number of years, but started becoming really common in May of 2000.

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  6. This should actually work, though it assumes that you have another bootable hard drive on your system, a situation which is far from universal.

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  7. This is a horrible idea for many, many reasons. I can't even begin.

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  8. This would in theory work, but it would be difficult, time-consuming, and annoying to put into practice.

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  9. Perl and Python are scripting languages, and the discussion of which one is better comes up from time to time on ark.

    Actually, I may as well admit that the reason I included this item was to troll Beable Von Polasm, ark's biggest Perl proponent, into responding. Unfortunately (?) he didn't.

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