Half a day gone, and one clean install of WinXP later and we're finally back online. All my bookmarks are gone, of course, and the Boy is mourning the loss of his Civ campaign(s) and assorted notation.

It happened just like a car accident. One minute you're cruising safely down the street with no cares in the world, the next you sit down to see an endless reboot loop as windows fails and fails to start. A recovery/repair could not be achieved. I had no choice. We lost the bookmarks, the digital pictures from the past year (most of them were not anywhere but on this laptop). But ultimately it's okay because the computer itself was able to be reinstalled and goes on... bookmarks can be found again. Pictures can be retaken.

Still it's a lousy way to clean the desktop...