Dave Bost

Did you ever have one of those days were it seemed as though nothing wanted to work right? All you wanted to do was log in to your corporate network and maybe fill out a few expense reports. However, in your attempt to do so, you come across an error you’ve never seen before, “…Please install the Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol…”. Huh? So I do a little digging to try and find out why this elusive PPTP creature has decided to elude me this day. I mean after all, it’s been there, ready and willing the thousand other times I called upon it’s magical duties. Why, on this day, would it decide to evade me at such an important time as me needing to get my expenses paid?!?

I checked into my network settings in Vista and Vista tells me that I’m not connected to a network. Hmmm… that’s odd, because I actually am. See… I’m able to get email, browse the net, read blogs and everything else requiring a connection to that great cloud in the tubes. The only thing I can’t do is log in to the VPN network. The most important task at hand at this particular time.

After some time with the internal Microsoft help desk, and stumping them on this particular issue, I decided to revert back to a full system restore image that I created a few weeks back when I was blessed with my new Dell M1330 laptop. Now, I’ve used this image once already when VS2008 shipped and I wanted to revert back to a clean state on my machine and install the bits. (I was thinking!) Worked like a champ.

However, on this day of all days, the System Restore system application was reporting that “oh no, sir. I know nothing of this image, it seems to be corrupted.” Ugh. I finally make an executive decision and reformat the box and re-install everything from scratch. Not that big of a deal as I haven’t had too much on this machine as it’s fairly new, but still a pain. (As a side note for those needing to install Vista on a Dell M1330, be sure to load the Intel Storage driver as the first step in your Vista install process. Otherwise, you’ll get a nasty uncontrollable Blue Screen/Reboot sequence the first time you boot up your box.)

Ok… problem solved. On to the next issue of the day…

While at the Microsoft campus in Las Colinas last week, I picked up the Xbox Wireless Adapter from the company store. When I got home, I slapped that bad boy onto a 2nd Xbox that I have stashed in the bedroom. Downloadable movies here I come. I have some Microsoft points on my gamertag, BogeyD, and I wanted to use them to download some movies. The only way to do this is to get my gamertag onto this particular Xbox.

Now anyone with a sense about them would’ve gone downstairs and grabbed the memory unit (MU) that has all of my precious gamertag info stored on it and brought it upstairs, plugged it into the 2nd Xbox and been off to the races. But no… I don’t have any sense. I was teased with the “Recover your gamertag” option on the main screen when booting up an Xbox with no gamertag. I selected this option thinking I could just do another “Recover” on the main Xbox. Wrong!

I was able to bring the gamertag down to Xbox #2, but pulling it down to #1 posed a problem. I kept getting an error saying that “the xbox signup service is unavailable”. After 4 hours of dealing with this message, I called Xbox support (I hate calling any support. And this is the 2nd time this day). I will say that Xbox support was very gracious and helpful. Unfortunately, they were stumped by my little problem. We determined that my gamertag might be corrupt and that someone on the Xbox Live team would’ve have to look into it.

As it turns out, the next day I was able to recover my gamer tag, but to my horror…my Bioshock game save was missing! Not only was Bioshock missing, but ALL OF MY GAME SAVES WERE GONE!!! You’ve got to kidding me. How many countless hours were spent getting to 50%, 60%, 75% game completion with the thought of someday finishing the game. Now, I’m back to 0% for all of my games. It kind of makes you want to shelve your games and start fresh.

From what I come to find out later is when you recover your gamertag, there is an option that all game saves will be deleted. Apparently, I missed it and didn’t uncheck this particular *highly important* option. Yay, me.

Xbox folk, if you’re listening, please provide an option to store game saves in the cloud. I’d gladly pay for this privilege.

So…yes… this was the day that everything went south on me.

There’s always tomorrow.

Uncategorized