Ever have one of those days where your PC is screaming “upgrade me?” I think mine is heading in that direction, but not without a real fight first. Yesterday I was thrilled to see that I was able to do a clean install of my OS without any troubles, largely because I keep my user data on a separate partition. Then things started going wrong. Input/output errors during boot, then the same when I again tried to re-install yet again.

I clean the DVD burner with an approved CD cleaner and use another unrelated disk for an installation attempt. Again, part of the way through the install, some stupid input/output error. From what I am able to tell, it could mean a bad DVD/CD drive or possibly, although I deem it as unlikely, a bad hard drive. Then again, the hard drive was tossing those same errors at me at first, so maybe it is.

So here we are, because I am on a time crunch and do not have time to troubleshoot the hardware — new hard drive/DVD-CD drive, new cables for each and hell, I am even using different controllers! The result — I am still seeing input/output errors on ISO images brand new that have tested today as working on other PCs.

I am about to do a test install with Windows to see what might be going on, even though clearly, this is something down the chain of hardware as the drives, cables and CDs all check out. I am ready to scream at this point as I receive yet another reminder why my blood presure was so high back in my PC repair days. Seriously, this is ridiculous…