Windows Rejected Itself and Now Linux As Well
Mar 18
Posted: under Technology.
I do love computers so. I can usually say that without sarcasm, but I do so with. When I was a tech in high school, I would frequently do so.. 
Of course now is one of those times though….
I was very excited when windows xp came out. It’s promises of increased stability and reliability were very alluring. I was more than ready to be rid of the 9x line of the windows family. I got xp a few months after it came out in late 2001. I’m still running that same installation.
Yeah, it’s been over 3 years since I reinstalled. That’s absolutely amazing. Had I been using 9x, it would have lasted maybe a year before I needed to do so. I’m overdue as is, but for some reason I’ve been putting off this housecleaning task which of course is odd because I never put anything else off at all…. 
. I’ve always considered windows to be rather cannibalistic…. As you run it more and more it will eat itself alive.. if you really want to keep your computer running smoothly, don’t turn it on
You might be thinking to yourself that you have a computer running windows 98 that’s been going fine for 3 years now, so what’s the big deal? If you’re one of those people, then all I can say is that you don’t use your computer like I do…..I play, a lot. I install all kinds of programs to do all kinds of things. I couldn’t tell you right off hand how many programs I have installed right now but I’d guess it’s around 50 or more. I’m sure that I’ve installed and uninstalled hundreds over the past 3 years (though sometimes that’s just uninstalling an old version and then installing a newer one mind you). In case you’re not that familiar with how windows actually works…..that’s a really bad practice for it’s health. As you install and uninstall programs the computer tends to want to slow down and develop little problems. I used to think that this is due to the registry (essentially a database that contains the configuration information for every program on the computer, including windows) getting all messed up. I still have some belief in this, but either that is the case but there’s no good way to repair/clean the registry or that’s not the only thing going on here.
Also, it’s not like my computer is unusable. There are certain things that don’t work….hibernation/standby went out on my a long time ago and I recently found out that the system information program won’t actually startup, oh, the keyboard and/or mouse don’t necessarily work when you boot…sometimes it takes a few tries… but nothing TOO major has out and out quit. Overall xp has held up quite well. When I say I need to reinstall, it’s not from a non-functioning computer, but rather from one that has become slower than I want it to be and has certain quirks (like the above mentioned for example) that hinder it’s usefulness. I imagine that your average user doesn’t care that much to even notice their computer sliding downwards like that, but I sure as hell do.
I would have just started all of this out by reinstalling windows (and probably putting on linux as well) except that wouldn’t be exactly easy. My data is backed up, so that’s really no big deal. The problem is that I have a billion and one programs floating around on this baby and it’s simply going to be a pain in the ass to reinstall everything. Most of the programs I have installed I actually use as well….some of them maybe only once every month or two, but they still get used. I know if I don’t have them, I’ll end up wanting to do something funky that I don’t usually do and I’ll have to go hunting for a way to do it. It’s going to be a pain, but that’s what I’m staring at right now….
You see, a couple of weeks ago I thought that maybe I’d install linux. At that point I wasn’t ready to reinstall windows (and I can’t get rid of it altogether mind you….I have important programs that won’t run on linux, unfortunately). I currently have 2 hard drives….windows is on an 80 gig and I have a 160 that mainly houses music, pictures, and video (it does have some programs on it though…that’s good to keep in mind). I decided I’d split off 20 gigs from the 160 and install linux. That didn’t work out. The linux program (I do believe it’s inventively called ntfsresize) I was using couldn’t repartition the drive. I have a number of theories as to why, but it’s really a moot point now. I decided I would just do the 80 gig instead. So I did, and it worked. I installed Manrake 10.1 and all was happy (I was going to installed SuSE 9.2 but the install went too slow for my taste…maybe their servers were bogged down (SuSE more or less forces you to install over ftp) ). It ran, everything seemed to work, etc.
Until I went into windows. Then we were just plain confused. As I recall, win 9x didn’t understand a linux partition and, for better or for worse, just ignored it’s existance. Not xp apparently. My reiserfs and linux swap partitions suddenly were partitions of type “raw” to windows. I wouldn’t really care if it weren’t for the fact that windows moved the drive letter of the 160 gig hd to accommodate these two newcomers. That meant that I had a good 6 or 8 errors at startup for missing dll’s and such since the programs I had installed on that drive were now suddenly in a different place to windows. Wonderful.
This is stupid. I mean really. This has been a problem since windows 95 came out….nearly 10 years ago! Why in the hell would windows change the letter of the drive on it’s own like that? It should be smart enough to know that it shouldn’t shove that drive that’s been installed for over a year out of the way so it can make room for a newbie. The traditional problem like this occurred when a system had a hd (c:) and a cd-rom (d:) and then you installed a second hard drive which would then become d: and your cd-rom would go to e:. This then breaks all of your programs looking for a cd. Newer versions of windows don’t insist on putting the hard drives first like windows 95 did, and it’s been really easy to just move the letters around as you please for quite some time now. In theory anyways…
Widnows will let you change the drive letter of a drive. It’s actually pretty easy. Oh, unless you’re me. The old drive letter was occupied by one of the linux partitions. For some reason, windows wouldn’t le me reassign those drive letters, so I had no way of moving the 160 back to where it belonged. I messed around for a while and eventually said screw it and I deleted the linux partitions. It was a fresh install that I had done pretty much nothing to except install firefox. It would be easy to recover.
If only.
I used windows to delete the partitions. I guess that was my big mistake. I shouldn’t have trusted it at all……On the upside, once they were gone, I moved my other drive back to the right spot and all is happy (or at least as happy as ever) with windows again. On the downside, when I went to try out some other ideas for making it all work together I was informed that the partition table was fucked up and I essentially can’t touch it without first deleting the primary partition (btw, when you delete a partition you loose everything on it)….the place windows is on.
So now I have 20 gigs unassigned. I can’t actually create a linux partitoin (or even an ntfs partition) in that space, and I also can’t resize the primary partition to fill the space. How annoying. I have well over 20 gigs to spare between the two drives, so it’s not exactly the end of the world, but it’s more about the principle of the whole thing. Besides, I still have a confused windows to deal with and no linux to help me out.
Needless to say I’m going to reinstall windows at some point. I’m going to totally clear off the drive and it’s going to have linux and windows on it. I just need to go through and make a list of all the programs I use and then download most of them so I don’t have to bother late. Especially important is SP2…..I don’t think connecting an unpatched (virgin if you will 
) copy of windows to the internet, even for just a little while to download the updates, is a good idea. I’ll get around to doing this eventually….erg.
I actually look forward to it really….windows really DOES need to be reinstalled. I just wish it hadn’t been quite such a long road getting here. Oh well
I do love computers.
