My XP install is FUCKED. I've not been able to fix it since last night, when it didn't boot up after a reboot at 5am or some time around then. I stayed up till 7am working on it, and had no luck.

In a foolish fleeting moment, I asked people at work if they had any idea how to fix the perticular problem I was having.

No one knew of any solution to the problem, but despite their existances complete lack of usefulness to me, some people still attempted to pipe in with the ever useful "Windows? you should use Linux" comments.

After beating them to death with a rusty mallet. I explained to their still twitching corpses, that unlike them, I have more pressing computing needs then just running the latest version of nmap. So Linux, as cute as it is at running Apache, would just not cut it for my needs.

To wrap this story up, I'll just say that I've yet to repair XP, and the though of doing a clean install has me crying because it is roughly a three day process for me to get XP and all of my programs reinstalled and reconfigured to the way I need them.
Now read diveintomarks ammusing account of his XP reinstall.

Its just one of those days
When you don't wanna wake up
Everything is fucked
Everybody sucks
You don't really know why
But wanna justify
Rippin' someone's head off
No human contact
And if you interact
Your life is on contract
Your best bet is to stay away motherfucker