Shoutbox

\\\Warning quite a lengthy story///

Ahhh where should I start. Well I guess I'll first start with the story.

One day my self like other computer crazy people out there decided to try Linux. I had heard that Ubuntu was a great Linux OS and that it was great for beginners like myself. So hearing all this great information about it I said to my self "Hey! Why not install it. I'll just have it double boot with XP.”

And then I was off. Downloading the Linux iso at 300 kbps, burnt it to CD and whipped it into my CD Rom. Restarted my computer and started the install. Who ever knew a Linux install was so easy I said to my self as I wiped through the questions. Finally Ubuntu booted up and I was logged in. Wow it was amazing and it was lot better than Windows.

After 3 hours of using Linux I decided to reboot back into XP and transfer some music over to the Linux hard rive. Now remember I’m all happy that I installed my first Linux system without blowing it to shit. But then I became very Unhappy to find out that alls my Windows XP consists of now is a nice eye piercing blue screen with screeching bright white letters telling me that I’m basically screwed up the butt because ‘Where sorry but A fatal system error has occurred and your system has shut down to prevent any damage that could occur.”. So now you can fill in what I might have said at a time like this. Any who getting back to the story. My Windows was dead and I had no clue what to do. So I did the best possible thing. Booted up my other PC and headed straight for nothing less but … Google. At times like these there’s nothing like the feel of Google telling you the words you want to hear… OMG that sounded gay lmao. Yea so I Googled it up and found my info I needed.

To make a long story short the Linux boot loader (GRUB) changed my XP NTFS partition to type 44, which is an unknown type so the computer didn’t know what the hell it was. So I had to manually edit the partition table and set it back to 07 which is the NTFS file system. So by doing that I screwed my MBR, so I had to write a new MBR as well. So now my Windows finally booted up but then only to find my backup hard drive, (you know the hard drive where you keep all your important backup stuff on) can’t be recognized by windows any more. So by now its been 2 days in front of a DOS prompt with piles of boot floppies scattered throughout my desk and hard drives lying allover my floor. Now at this point I just about have had it so I formatted the hard drive with Linux and went back to Google for more answers.

After hours of Google searching I come across a great program called Winternals EDR Commander. I booted with this program and ran it. It found my lost hard drive and right away found all the files on it. I was quite pleased. It just so happened that my Norton System Works had made a backup copy of the partition table right before my computer died. So I was able to restore my hard drives partition table back with EDR Commander. Thank God for Norton. 

So now after 3 days of swearing, smashing and throwing of objects I’m happy to say my computer is running 100%. But just to think that a simple install of Linux almost cost me the lose of irreplaceable data which makes me think twice before installing Linux again. So there’s my story, I just had to tell it. But now I’m off to go back up my stuff.

** And if any one knows a way to install Ubuntu without affecting Windows XP please tell me

Did you have to resize the ntfs partition, or did you have a blank one already? The thing I don't get is why grub would have corrupted your partition table. By the way, you could have used lilo, which allows you to install it in the MBR or just the boot record of each partition, which probably would have worked better than some random nt one or whatever you had previously in there =p

That story is exactly why I do not dual boot.

you must have felt like just doing this

Btw, ddi you Check/confirm the md5sum matched before you installed it?

quote:

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Originally posted by Animal
Btw, ddi you Check/confirm the md5sum matched before you installed it?

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why in the fucking hell would a broken download cause the install to work fine but have a faulty fdisk tool that also works fine untill you save the new partition table at which point it corrupts it?

:---------------------------o

Never had a problem with dual booting windows xp and Mandrake/Red Hat/Mandriva. I'm gonna try Ubuntu in a week or so after the exams. But I don't suspect it to be different from the others. Have you used Partition magic or another partitionmaker to make an Ext3 first? Or just let the Ubuntu-install do it?

Just a tip for not having to dual boot from Linux to Windows just for some music: you can access the Windows partition without a problem in Linux and so accessing all your files.

I'm glad to read at the end it worked out fine . Did you remove Ubuntu or are you still using it?

quote:

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Originally posted by DJeX
Who ever knew a Linux install was so easy I said to my self as I wiped through the questions. Finally Ubuntu booted up and I was logged in. Wow it was amazing and it was lot better than Windows.

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* rav0 questions wether DJeX works for Ubuntu even though they are nfp

Ubuntu has the worst installer that I have ever seen (NB: subjective comment), and what makes it "a lot better than Windows"?

Ubuntu Live Disk

Linux has only ever caused me problems tbh, I think it's more trouble than it's worth.