UPDATE (3:00p) – Got the loaner PC, a Thinkpad T40. Faster, but smaller (and lower screen res) than my A31. Ah, well, beggers can’t be choosers.

I’m going to lay out the stuff that I need to do to get my replacement/loaner PC up to snuff, in roughly the order it needs/I want it to be done, assuming I get a machine with a clean image of XP and Office 2000 (our standards) and contingent on where I am at the time I’m working on it. I’m putting the list here so that (a) if I lose my notes, I won’t be screwed, and (b) for the edification and brickbats of all:

Notes: DA=”install from Downloads archive”; DF=”needs data files from backup”

X Wireless PC card (at home; CD)
X Copy over Downloads archive from backup.

O Office 2003 (get discs from Rick/Sara) (Rick has them at home, dagnabbit)
O Lookout (DA, dagnabbit; too many things to look up.)
O IHateSpam (DA; dagnabbit)

X xReminderPro (DA, DF; need to be reminded of stuff!)

X Firefox (DF; see info on profile migration. The bookmarks.html should be available from DF, too) Installed, then copied over Mozilla profile directory. No sweat.
X Firefox extensions (DA? See here for partial list) Installed automatically.

X Thunderbird (DF; see above on profile migration, also here; verify mail copied over!) Installed, copied over Thunderbird profile, but ran into serious problems. Several partial rebuilds of the profile later, eventually got working in Safe Mode …
X Thunderbird extensions (DA?) … because for some reason the extensions didn’t load in, so it was getting all confused. Uninstalled them, reinstdalled them, all’s right with the world.

X Jaeger (DA; restore settings from DF?) Installed, then copied over Application Data directory. Oops, bad license code since the PC ID is different now. Working, but nagging.
O PSACards (DA, DF)

X AdAware
X SpyBot S&D

X XP PowerToys/TweakUI
X Set up ClearType.

O Restore partial My Documents directory. (Since size will be an issue, do not bring over My Pictures or My Music for the moment, maybe more)
O Templates
O Spelling dictionaries?

X Windows Messenger (does it work now?) Yes, it does!
X MTClient (DA)

O Palm basic software (CD? DF – CUSTOMIZE TO LOAD STUFF FROM PALM, DESKTOP, OR SYNC BEFORE FIRST SYNC (my Palm’s okay).)
O PocketMirror
O BackupBuddy
O SplashID
O BalanceLog!!
O WordSmith
O BrainForest
O Installation directory (DF)

O SmartFTP (DA)
O RoboForm (DA; DF?)
O Siggy (DA)
O EditPad Lite (DA)
O FontMinder (DA?)
O SharpMT (does it work now?)

O home scanner software (CD)

X PaintShopPro 8.1 (CD)
X MS Project (CD)
X Visio (CD)

Do not install:
X iTunes (for now; no music files)
X POPfile (no need)
X OE Backup (no need)
X SyncIt (no need for now)
X AZZCardfile (no need for now)
X MSN Messenger (since WinMsgr works)
X SETI@Home (let’s hold off)

Now you see why I didn’t want to have to start over from scratch. And, at that, I’m sure I’m forgetting all sorts of stuff.

It’s a good thing Friday night is Bachelor Night at my house …

The Case of the Corrupted Kernal continues …

Attempts to push the image down to the only free 60Gb drive we have — so that I can then get rid of some of the stuff, and then reimage it, then push it down to a 40 — have failed. Don’t ask me why. So …

They can (and are going to anyway) get a 60Gb notebook drive, which would arrive on Friday. At that point, they could (hopefully) push the image down to that, plug it into a spare notebook and go from there.

I.e., two more days without my PC’s image. At least. Probably the weekend, too.

No.

So, Plan G. They get me a clean notebook as a loaner. I rebuild it into my desired image, use the data files from my backup drive at home, and I’m up and running by COB tomorrow. I hope. Then my old notebook can be shipped off to IBM for a week or twelve, and when it gets back, we transfer an image from the loaner notebook to mine, and I’m back to where I should be.

Rrg. Pain, to be sure, but I’m sure that, in a decade or two, we’ll look back on this sort of PC migration the same way we today look back on “I dropped my only copy of the typewritten manuscript on the ground and the pages got all messed up and some flew away, so I had to retype it all” as quaint and thank-god-we-live-in-a-modern-age way.

I hope.