[ale] XP SP3 anyone

[Alex Carver]

Thanks for all the help everyone.  I'm rebuilding the laptop with the
failed hard drive.  It's still using XP because I've got some
Windows-only software that doesn't work on anything higher.  I have two
sets of XP installation media that both predate Service Pack 1 hence the
need to download the latest service pack in order to get Windows Update
itself updated so it would download all the hotfixes (hotfix links are
broken on MS's site, they all just point to a banner page stating XP is
no longer supported).

One of the install media is actually the recovery media from the laptop
manufacturer.  It's a Symantec Ghost image spread across three CDs.  My
next project as the laptop reinstalls itself is to figure out how to
unpack the Ghost images so I can just have access to the drivers for the
hardware.  Then I can use the normal install media and add the drivers
manually.

As for the drive, gddrescue is still chugging along.  I'm keeping my
fingers crossed that the few files I want to recover will make it
through.  I only need maybe 50 MB worth of files and thankfully nearly
all of them are text files so I may have a few options for data
extraction from the recovery image.  In case anyone is wondering, the
drive is a DeathStar.