Technology, huh...

Ugh. It's been hours now.

I am watching the ever-so-slow progress of scandisk on a second computer. Little blue boxes turning green at a snail's pace. And guess what - it probably won't find the problem.
I promised a friend in need of a computer that I could set them up with one. I have 2 I'm really not using anymore. Not exactly state of the art, but they work just fine... or so I thought. But, as John Belushi would say, "Buuttttttt, Nooooooooo..."

The gremlin chasing started with the first, and older computer that I have since gutted of drives and set by the door to take outside for a thorough hammering and ritual burning. Piece of crap. So I fire up the second one, thinking "I'll just transfer my personal files to CD, and clear it out like new for its new user. Piece of cake." Right.
At startup, it sticks on the windows opening splash forever...I wait...and wait... No go. Shutdown. Restart. Click F1 or F2... Startup in safe mode. Can't run scandisk even in safe mode 'cause it keeps restarting. Shutdown. Insert Windows98 startup floppy. Run scandisk.exe. Now I wait and watch. No bad clusters yet. Only 400,000 more clusters to go - another hour at least.

So what the hell is going on?? Isn't technology supposed to make our lives better? If so, why are we spending hours and hours fixing problems, running diagnostics, firewalling, and preventing viruses?

For crying out loud, there has to be an easier way!