Disaster!

I have just trashed my shack PC. Not intentionally, you understand. I was trying to resolve a problem and the result was that the system has restored itself to the state it was in when it was new back in 2006 or whenever it was.

I have been using a backup program called Magicure. I've probably mentioned it in this blog before. It's kind of a System Restore on steroids. It has saved my bacon countless times and I have come to depend upon it. But it started giving an error message when it tried to do a backup. No new backups were being made. So I had to do something about it.

I emailed Magicure support for help but didn't receive a reply. I saw that there was a newer version of the software so I decided to download and install that in the hope that this would get it working again.. But the installer complained that there was another version present and asked me to remove it first. So I started to uninstall Magicure. That was a mistake.

The uninstaller said that it was going to roll back to before Magicure was first installed. If I was a bit sharper-witted I might have smelt a rat at this point. But I thought "no, surely it isn't going to do that." I just want to remove Magicure. So I clicked OK and within a few seconds I was looking at a Windows XP login screen with only Administrator as the available login. This looked ominous. No user "Julian". It looked as if it had rolled back the entire system to the state it was in when new, when I first installed Magicure.

I have no idea what the Administrator password was. But if I knew it I would be no better off because the computer won't respond to the mouse or keyboard. So I can't get in to the system to assess the extent of the damage. I don't seem to have a Windows XP disc to reinstall from scratch, either.

What an utter disaster. I have no idea what to do at this point.