Neverinstall Nights

For all of the computing progress we’ve made so far, it’s amazing that some things are still so fragile.

All I wanted to do today was install the new NWN expansion, and while it was merrily copying the files to the hard drive it ran into some sort of error and threw up a cryptic dialog box. Normally I’d just restart the install, but oh no, it wasn’t going to be that simple… The expansion pack now no longer recognized that NWN was even installed at all and wouldn’t allow itself to continue.

So, I was going to have to reinstall all of NWN. No problem, I dug out all of the CDs and manuals (damn the bastard who thought printing all the CD keys in the manuals was a good idea) and started a fresh install. After copying all three CDs, it asked for the first disc again, and after putting it in my CD-ROM drive started freaking out. It’s a rather….quirky drive, so I’d gotten used to these little hissy-fits where it would make strange noises, fail to recognize discs, etc., but this time it just sat there continually spinning and making its little choking noises and nothing I could do would stop it; it ignored the eject button, and attempting to bring up the system manager would just hang forever. So, I eventually had to give up and just hit the big ‘ol reset button.

Of course, since the install wasn’t quite finished yet and I’d forcibly aborted it, I had to redo it all over again…

You’d think we’d be able to build tools and programs that are better at monitoring their own state, repairing themselves, and recovering from errors cleanly. We always like to take the easy way out though, and when a simple “eh, just try reinstalling it” works, doing it properly becomes a much lower priority. Especially when it’s just a silly game…