Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, FUCK!!! Shit, schist, caca, merde!!!
Sorry about the language there, but I am really pissed off right now. Partly at myself, I should have backed everything up before I started. I know that. But mostly I am pissed at Microsoft...
What I am I talking about? I have been doing rolling upgrades on the computers here at home since I got back from Michigan. Taking it slow, just a little at a time. First I built myself a new machine and moved all my stuff over to it. (Quite a cool new machine too, I should post pics.) Then I moved my wife's stuff from an old HP running Win 98 to my previous machine, being as that was quite an upgrade for her. Finally, today, I upgraded her box from Win 98 to Win XP. I had some problems, but I got it done and was setting up the accounts when I discovered something that had me cursing like a sailor up to his neck in bilgewater...
The Win XP upgrade process ate my wife's Outlook Express Data Folder! No shit! Everything!
It works like this: In Win 98 the identities are stored in the Windows directory, with the data files for the programs using an identity stored as subdirectories of the identity folder. In Win XP you have a Win 2000 style 'Directories and Settings' folder that contains a subdirectory for each user, with identities for that user stored under that. And so on and so forth.
So far, so good. I had forgotten about Win 98 putting data in the Windows folder and didn't think to back up the files there. And honestly, I might not have done so if it had occurred to me -- after all, you would think Microsoft had tested for an upgrade preserving the data files of one of their own applications? Wouldn't you?
Apparently not. In the upgrade process Win XP simply blew away anything in the Windows folder it didn't need. Bye bye hundreds of megabytes of email. Right down the bit bucket.
One saving grace; we gave Anita's old HP to a friend who is always looking for boxes to add to his SETI cluster. I called him up and he hadn't reformatted the drive yet and, yes, the files are still there. He is burning a CD of the files as I type so, hopefully, I will be able to restore the bulk of the lost email and address book. Unfortunately there is a week or so gap that is lost forever, but this is better than nothing.
But damn... Fuck...
All you Linux Geeks can start ranking on me now!