Having found a sort-of solution to the external hard drive issue (quick version: Throw money at the problem!) and having struggled to find non-corrupted versions of all the files in my music collection, I've now backed up what I think are all my essential files and I'm ready to format the laptop's hard drive and re-install Windows. If I'm not back in 6 hours, avenge my laptop's death.
UPDATE: Whew! I seem to be up and running at some minimal level of functionality again. Still need to install a lot of drivers and programs, but I do at least have an OS + internet access + access to an external harddrive, which should be all I need to bootstrap back to where I was a few hours ago.
Well it's a good thing that your laptop works. Not that I'm implying that you're going to need it when your "computer" comes. You know, cause it's just gonna be a box.
Pfft! They've already got a thing on the status page for their site indicating that there's been progress on my computer! It's got an assembly date and everything!
What's worrisome, though, is that there are stamps for "Warehouse Date," "Assembly Date," "First Quality Control Date," and "Final Quality Control Date." Mine has a warehouse date from last Tuesday, then yesterday at 8:30 AM it got an assembly date, so that's presumably when it was finished being built. Then yesterday it ALSO got a final quality control date at around noon! It's like they skipped the initial quality control and did the final quality control in just a few hours!
I'm growing more and more concerned.