Stupid, stupid, stupid!

[elfs]

I cannot right now explain the depths of my frustration.

Omaha and I bought ourselves copies of Warcraft III so that we could have something we could play against one another. She had had a copy for a while. I bought one just a few days ago since it had gone on sale. I bought the "gift edition," in which the game comes on both CD-Rom and DVD.

I installed the DVD, or tried to. It told me I needed to update my Windows Entertainment package. I tried to do that, but I needed SP1 to make it happen.

The update blew away my Linux bootloader. And I couldn't get it back. I couldn't get to Linux. I couldn't get to Windows. Annoyed, I started through the rigamorale' as I'd done it last time-- start by installing Windows, then install Linux properly over the Windows master boot record so I could install both.

Something right at that moment chose to break inside the hard drive on which I'd installed Windows, so the only valid hard drive on the system was the second one-- the Linux one. Windows recognized it. Since there was only one drive, Windows didn't give me any options or information about it. It just said, "There is one drive C. Do you wish to format it?" Thinking it was talking about hard drive zero-- and why shouldn't it, I mean, I didn't know hard drive zero had failed yet-- I said yes.

It deleted my entire Linux partition and tried to install over it.

I've lost everything. My files, my back-ups, everything. All the progress I'd made on various video games. My stories are on Lain, so that's okay. Most of my legal records, passwords, etc, are backed up on other media. I can rebuild Linux, that's not a problem. But... it's so fucking unfair. I shouldn't have to do this.

Have I recently mentioned just how much I fucking hate Windows?

Comments

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

I feel your pain, my friend... that foul excuse for a 32-bit patch had no excuse for fscking with your MBR, it doesn't need it.

That said, I have two words for you: Rescue Disk. There are many forms of it, depending on which Linux you run; it can be a floppy or a CD, mini or full-sized. (Most distros' #1 CD functions as a resuce disk.) Boot to this, get a shell, chroot to your Linux, and reinstall the bootloader. Takes five minutes, and it's safe and effective.

Of course, having the hardware crap out in the first place blows kittens too... but GRUB or LILO would've told you it was gone, not just assumed the first hard drive that answered the phone was C:...

Ever considered a Mac for a games box?

[omahas.livejournal.com]

Ever considered a Mac for a games box?

I wanted to tell him that last night, but you can understand why I figured it probably wasn't a good idea at the time. But, he's right when he says a little further down, we just can't afford him to have two boxes at the moment. Sigh.

well...

[http://users.livejournal.com/dominic-m-/]

ummm...errr....owww? I know you may hate windows (and thats all fine believe me) but just saying windows xp solves the hardrive deletion/crash problem with its wonderfull system restore. yer prolly gunna hate me for saying this but if you had a working copy (even cracked) of windows xp you could have stopped this windows compatability (evil attack) issue if you had xp,s neat tools. Windows may have been written by drunk monkeys but the monkeys on ocassion create neat toys.

Re: well...

[elfs.livejournal.com]

System Restore only works if you have the system with which to restore. The hard drive had failed. And XP is even more notorious about mucking with non-MS boot loaders, so it's not really a solution.

Re: well...

[http://users.livejournal.com/dominic-m-/]

quite true but maybe XP would not have made you reformat...but then again i dont know.probably would have anyways.well for normal solutions and not hardrive failures i guess xp would have helped but your right it would have been useless here also...

[fallenpegasus]

Yow.

You will understand exactly why I feel your pain.

This is why we don't mix fertilizer and gasoline

[beschizza.livejournal.com]

I humbly suggest 1 box for Windows, 1 box for Linux. A division of labour between games and work. And if something breaks, chances its just a cat5.

Re: This is why we don't mix fertilizer and gasoline

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I know. That would make sense. I just can't afford two hot boxes.

Re: This is why we don't mix fertilizer and gasoline

[danlyke.livejournal.com]

I've started using those removable drive trays for my desktop dual-boot system. Saves a heck of a lot of hassle and doesn't cost as much as two independent systems.

[ben-raccoon.livejournal.com]

How is it that hard drive failures always seem to happen during OS installs/reinstalls? I've blown two drives doing that, myself..

[http://users.livejournal.com/dominic-m-/]

plain n simple...heavy load systems doing what they want with the hardware...They ARE the operating system and if things dont go perfectly during installations anything could happen (hence the blown drives)