Saturday was a nice day to simply hang out and play around on the computer. All of my computers have been running exceptionally well, and with my newest Acer AspireRevo serving at my home theater PC, I couldn’t leave well enough alone. I decided I wanted to install a custom theme for Windows Media Center.

The perfect plan. A slight reg hack to allow me to take ownership of some system files, and an easy mod to a .DLL file to include the new background image. To make things easy, I decided to use my desktop PC running Windows 7 to do the hacking. Unfortunately, the “easy” reg hack corrupted file associations, and left me unable to run any programs at all. This crippled my ability to run a system restore.

Left with no other choice, I stuck my HP MSS recovery disc into the drive, rebooted, and was immediately reassured that I wasn’t completely screwed. The HP software walked me through the recovery process, and 30 minutes later, my desktop was back to the exact state it was in before I screwed it up. At that moment, I knew that my HP MediaSmart purchase was a wise decision. I’m equally reassured that the other computers in my house (8 of them) are all being backed up the same way, automagically, and without relying on my wife and kids to do anything.

While I originally purchased the MSS for the media and storage capabilities, I have a whole new appreciation for the entire package now. I just ordered a new hard drive for my Macbook Pro, so I’ll be revisiting my experience when I do the swap there too. Stay tuned.