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Journal nizo's Journal: You gotta be kidding me Mr. Gates 10

Journal by nizo

Ok so I am still in the midst of repairing/upgrading various machines. In my new machine, I stuck my old SATA disk (one huge linux partition, with data on it I care about) and an IDE disk (ready to be wiped, to be dual booted with Windows XP and Ubuntu). I go to install XP, and it absolutely REFUSES to install on the IDE disk, because it wants to write crap onto the SATA disk (complaining, "there is no partition on that disk that I can deal with"). Are you kidding me??? I have to unplug the SATA disk, which has nothing to do with Windows, so that I can install XP? How brain dead is that??

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You gotta be kidding me Mr. Gates More

You gotta be kidding me Mr. Gates

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  • Y'see, from XP programmers' viewpoint, you're obviously trying to hamstring XP's performance. And pretty much all Microsoft software "encourages" its users in decisions that are in their own best interests (pronoun 'their' left intentionally vague). Since it isn't illegal to do this kind of stuff, Microsoft does it all the time.

    I remember back in the heat of the Netscape vs. Internet Explorer dabacle, when Microsoft put out a "stripped" version of its O/S that allowed the option of installing Netscape, th
  • Its not Microsoft's fault you don't know what's best for you. They are merely trying to save you from yourself;-)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by nizo ( 81281 ) *
      *pokes Shadow Wrought with a pitchfork*

      Hey go look at my latest art on deviantart already and see if you can figure out what it is (I dunno what it is; I need someone to tell me).
  • I am still amazed that if you need drivers not included on the install disk that you need to have a floppy disk. I haven't had a floppy disk drive in years. thankfully, projects like "nlite" make slipstreaming the drivers not that hard. but come on, read the drivers off a USB stick or something, not just a floppy disk.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by nizo ( 81281 ) *
      Yeah don't even get me started on that either. I have floppy drives in a couple machines, but only because I need something to sit in the slot because I can't find the 3.5" faceplate :-P And I usually don't waste my time even hooking them up.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Tet ( 2721 )
      I am still amazed that if you need drivers not included on the install disk that you need to have a floppy disk.

      Yep, me too. I haven't had a floppy drive in my machines for years. Fortunately, mkisofs will let you convert a floppy image into a bootable CD image, which usually does the trick. Assuming you can get the raw floppy image, that is. You usually can, but some BIOS vendors give you a Windows executable that writes the image (which is embedded in the executable) for you -- not so useful when I don'

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by bersl2 ( 689221 )
      I do! It was only $10, plus a few more for shipping, and I think I have a couple of old spares.

      If something goes wrong, it is one technology I know that I can rely upon.

      (Hmm... I wonder if I should get a 5.25" floppy drive. You know, just because.)
  • ...Windows has always wanted to write a few files to the boot volume, even if the OS was to be installed on another. And within the first 1024 cylinders or some such. But my info may be out of date, as I'm still running W2K. Which predated SATA drives IIRC. (BTW, when I looked into dual-booting a Linux flavor or *BSD, they had the same limitations, at the time, so I assumed it was a BIOS thing.)
  • Yes, this is a hold over from the built in Microsoft arrogance, when no other OS was assumed to exist. Or if it did exist, it was another MS OS that the installer code could screw with.

    I don't know if MS changed their ways with Vista, but I would expect so. I mean, it is the 21st Century already, right?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by nizo ( 81281 ) *
      Actually, it wouldn't suprise me if Vista just formatted the damn disk for you. "No valid Microsoft partition found.... formatting"

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