Here’s a story for you.
A couple weeks back I bought a Lenovo S-10 netbook. It’s sweet, and worth every penny of the $250 they cost on the refurb site. However, getting it set up has been a NIGHTMARE.
I wanted to put Windows XP Pro on it, because I have no tolerance at all for stupid XP Home and its half assed authentication system. But the S-10 has no DVD drive built in. So, when I got it, I tried to set up a USB stick to be bootable and contain an XP installer. I spent a night on this, failed miserably to get it to work.
Next day I was telling a guy at work about it, and he said “you can borrow my USB DVD burner.” Perfect. I didn’t think anybody actually owned those, but great.
I take that home. Next problem is to get a copy of XP Pro for free. Another guy at work claims to have a copy that he got from CSU which has an unlimited volume license. Wonderful, unlimited free XP Pro! I can set up a million VMs at that rate... So I install it, and all looks well. Get on all the drivers, start setting up the preferences the way I like.
Giddy with joy.
Then I tell it to update itself on WindowsUpdate.com, and it immediately does a “Genuine Advantage“ check. This is how MS prevents piracy, and they like to tell you it's to your “advantage“ not to steal their software. As somebody who has spent a lifetime finding ways to get their software for free, I disagree with that suggestion. Regardless, the Genuine Advantage check tells me that my XP Pro install is not valid for the region I'm in. Can't figure out a way to fool it into stopping with that. It somehow is willing to keep installing updates, but it now complains at me constantly that I “may be a victim of piracy.“ It graciously offers to let me pay $150 for XP Pro, which, I should point out, in very short order (with the release of W7) is going to be two generations out of date as an OS.
So, no, none of that.
I should also point that I've already joined the computer to my domain, and named it LilEek, i.e. “Little Eek.“ This is a name that my son came up with for a friendly mouse, so now I'm fucked, because I'm sentimentally attached to the OS I've installed, and I'm not willing to wipe it and try again, because now it's LilEek, and deleting that would be mean.
So I try all the XP Pro keys I have, but none are acceptable.
I'm forced to fall back to option 2: Use the old Action Pack XP Pro licenses I have, and then when they don't activate, call up MS and whine at them until they activate it for me. So, I reinstall, this time with the media from my Action Pack. I try to activate it, and for reasons totally unknown to me, it activates!
Giddy with joy.
So, I try out the new S-10 with XP Pro. I try out the webcam, I parade around my house using it on wireless, I Remote Desktop into my servers and tell one to install updates while standing in the kitchen. Super.
Since I'm on such a roll, I decide to move the Drobo from my main “general use” PC, to a “server” machine I’ve set up in the library. The Drobo refused to go into Standby, so I felt it best to shut the host machine down before I unhooked the Drobo.
I shut down the host, unhook the Drobo, then I reboot, and it comes back up to the Dell system diagnostic tools. I reboot, same thing. Can’t get past them. Can’t figure out how to turn them off. Start to get angry. This is the machine I use ALL the time. Has all my shit on it.
Can't figure it out. Try to reboot several more times. Starting to do the “try repeatedly, hoping it's a joke“ thing computers cause one todo. Try unhooking everything, in case there's some boot shit on a USB device, or a stuck key on a keyboard sending it into the diagnostics. Nothing works.
Starting to freak out.
Scrabble around, searching for the Vista install disc. Can’t find. Get frustrated and smack the frame of my closet. Paint cracks off a joint for about a foot long.
Try to calm down.
Find the Vista install disc. Take it to the machine. Put it in, boot from the disk, tell it to repair. It says “oh, sure, there’s a problem, I’ll fix it.” Optimism... Reboots. Up comes the Dell system diagnostics screen.
Blood LITERALLY starts coming out of my nose. Jam some tissue up my nose, back to war.
I should also mention that every time the diagnostics screen comes up, there’s a burst of writing on the screen for about .00001 milliseconds that I REALLY want to read, but can’t. I consider filming it with the camcorder, to see if I can freeze it and read the text. It's infuriating. I even try a couple reboots of staring at the screen and trying to make my nervous system run faster when the text flashes past, but I fail.
I try the install disc repair tools again, tell it to restore to an earlier point. Restart. No effect. Getting into the more bitter, resigned stage of my rage. Starting to think about ways to get shit off the drive, places I can buy a new drive tomorrow morning.
Try the install disc repair tools again. Looking at the restore points, I note that they've got my OS partition listed as the E: drive. What the fuck? Then what's C:? I use the DOS prompt the tools provide, and I see that the C: drive appears to have the Dell System Diagnostics tools on it. Makes sense, that's what it's booting to every fucking time I turn it on, but why is it doing that?
Then it hits me... When I was trying to make a bootable USB stick about three nights ago, I was running the filepart tool to set it up for boot. I must have inadvertently changed the active partition on my host, and not on the stick, and it only showed up when I rebooted. So, I run filepart from the DOS prompt, set the (currently) E: drive as active and reboot.
And back up comes the OS. Joy!
So, think on that for a second. Three nights ago, while I was failing to get a bootable USB stick going, I must have accidentally told filepart to modify my main hard disk. Not only did this cause my main machine to eat shit three days later, but it also must mean I didn't set up the USB stick correctly, explaining why it wasn't working for me at that time. I managed to fuck up using filepart, even though at the time I was thinking “man, double check yourself every step of the way, you REALLY don't want to fuck up your main drive.“
Furthermore, when the repair tool told me it was going to fix the boot sector, it must have been looking at the Dell Diagnostics partition, normally hidden, which I had accidentally set active. Probably saw it was invisible, considered that a “problem“ worth fixing.
So, all is well at last (I hope). And believe me when I tell you, that's the edited, shortened version of all the individual battles it took to get from here to there.