Day from hell

[growler_south]

One of the programs I use- the main one, After Effects, refuses to start this morning. Everything else is working fine. So after much futzing with prefs, I uninstall it, nuke any reference to it from the registry, and reinstall.

It still doesnt run. Just hangs.

Cutting a long, frustrating, unproductive story short: I've formatted the system drive and reinstalled Windows. I'm about to install After Effects. Wish me luck!!


Things I tried today:

X Delete AE preferences
X Disable openGL
X Update display drivers
X Uninstall AE
X Reinstall AE
X run AE in safe mode
X attempt uninstall AE in safe mode
X Pound head on desk
X Reinstall XP SP2
X Uninstall ALL Adobe products
X remove all registry keys that reference Adobe products
X Regcleaner to nuke the rest
X reinstall AE
X pound head on desk
X Boot from XP disk
X Run XP repair from XP disk
X Eat cake and cry. While pounding head on desk.
X Boot from XP disk. Format C:
X Giggle maniacally.
X reinstall XP.
X reinstall AE (which now works!)
X realise I forgot to back up 4 years of email.
X pound head on desk.

Comments

[growler-south.livejournal.com]

Sorry, a little confusing I guess. AfterFX used to be a mac-only product, and it still calls its user profiles 'preferences'. I'm on a PC.

Tried safe mode- it still hung. Tried installing it from safe mode but "Windows installer could not be contacted. This can happen if you are in safe mode"- bloody hell!

It was running fine before I went home last night- I shut AE down, set a Maya batch render off from the command prompt (which completed just fine) and went home. Nothing I dont do every single day... there were no updates during the night either, I hadnt even restarted the machine when it refused to run.

Still, now I have the oh-so-happy bubbly XP look back. Ick ick ick!!!

[furr-a-bruin.livejournal.com]

Oh, yeah. One of the first things I did with my laptop when I got it was to set the user interface to look like W2K. Yes, it's boring - but at least it doesn't make me cringe.

(I left my server on the standard WXP UI - though I did switch to the somewhat less retch-inducing silver color scheme, even though that still does nothing about that god-awful green "Start" button.)

Sorry to hear about your trials with AE, not to mention accidentally flushing 4 years of email, and whatever else was in C:/Documents and Settings/&c. that you didn't back up. I'm giving Micro$uck's new "SyncToy" a try at doing that - backing up my user folders to my server.

[digdusdownunda.livejournal.com]

you're what what with the what what,,,,?

[growler-south.livejournal.com]

I'm horny and I'm playing with myself under my desk.

[digdusdownunda.livejournal.com]

well don't hide it i'm sure we'd all like to watch...