I decided to download the Vanguard client yesterday via the Station Launcher. Peter plays it occasionally, and I wanted to take a peek to test the waters.

Tonight I attempted to actually run what I’d downloaded.

Attempt #1: Fail. I never got past the pre-full-window-mode splash screen, and I got some sort of weird malformed double window frame with a perpetual “busy” hourglass cursor for a couple of minutes. I right-clicked on the task bar thingie and was able to close it without incident once I realized nothing was ever going to happen.

Attempt #2: Epic fail. Pre-splash splash didn’t last nearly as long, and then I got the full-screen blackout. Woohoo, here we go!

BLUE.

SCREEN.

OF DEATH.

I can’t tell you how long it’s been since I’ve gotten a BSoD on any of my systems. This particular one is about 2 years old, running XP Media Center Edition, SP3. Needless to say, Vanguard is on indefinite hold…at least until I get up enough courage to try to launch the client again. *shudder*

I’ve been having an extremely annoying time with my Windows XP installation over the past several months. I installed or changed something, and now my Explorer crashes at the drop of a hat, locking up every program that utilizes it (i.e., Outlook Express, Windows Explorer, Internet Explorer, PSPad [my HTML editor], FileZilla [my FTP client], Paint Shop Pro…the list goes on) and requiring me to reboot my system often, sometimes several times a day.

The worst part is that these programs that cause the lock-up (or die from the lock-up, who knows?) are programs I use often, both in my hobbies and any work I manage to get. Webdesign is a LOT less fun when it means running the necessary software makes your computer crash repeatedly.

I’ve done my share of Googling to try to find some sort of solution or work-around, but nothing I’ve tried so far has worked. I really, really, REALLY don’t want to have to reinstall XP (or upgrade to Vista, for that matter), since I have a lot of programs installed that I use often. Reinstalling them takes days, even weeks — and trust me, I know this from experience — which would put a huge dent in my available work time, as well as my hobby and gaming time. Let’s face it: All my friends live in this box. :p

I suppose my dilemma is this: Which is more time-consuming, rebooting my computer 15 times a day, or reinstalling XP and all my programs?