It’s now over 24 hours since I got my MP3-player. And it’s finally working! I’m using it right now, and the only bad thing I’ve found so far is that it takes about a second to skip from one song to another. Something I can probably live with. Let me tell you what I’ve been doing for the last 24 hours:

As I told you yesterday, my new Jens Of Sweden (Flash required) MP3-player didn’t work as promised with my Windows XP installation. “Probably just a few drivers that are missing.”, I thought. So I inserted my XP installation CD. That was my first bad move yesterday evening. “No need to take any backups, what can possible go wrong”, I thought and started the installation. That was my second bad move yesterday and probably this year’s worst move. Don’t I ever learn? If something can go wrong with Bill’s inventions, it does.

So, I re-installed XP on top of my old install, something that should - at least in theory - work flawlessly. Installation done, restart. And a warm welcome to the Blue Screen of Death. During startup XP simply hung. Safe mode? Blue screen. Last known good configuration? Blue screen. Totally fucked? Yes. If you ever end up in the same situation, here’s a possible solution, or at least the one I ended up using:

1. Get the Recover Console up and running, you do this by inserting your XP installation CD and pressing R when everything is loaded and you’re presented with the option.
2. Rename your windows installation directory to something else than what it’s right now, probably C:\WINDOWS or something else entirely.
3. Exit the Recovery Console.
4. Install a fresh version of Windows XP.
5. Dump everything you want to keep some place safe, for instance on a share on a corporate network. Like I did. Will someone hate me for having 22GB of personal data where I’m only supposed to have 100MB? Probably.
6. Re-partition you hard drive in two partitions this time. One for Windows XP and one for all the important stuff you want to keep next time XP decides to go FUBAR.
7. Reinstall everything.
8. Send a thank you note to Bill. Everybody now; “Thank you, Bill!”

If it wasn’t for the fact that I have to use all kinds of Microsoft-infested software at work, I certainly would’ve tried another OS: I’m not saying that they are all better than Windows, but that can’t possible be any worse.

Alternatively, you can do the following to get you Jens of Sweden player to work in XP (reply from Tim Ragnwald at the Jens of Sweden support department):

Go to our website, under Support - Downloads there is a program called “Exatelecom software”. Download and install it. When Windows asks for drivers (if it does), browse to the folder which you installed the program to.

But hey, how boring isn’t that?