i haaaaaate. i haaaaaate.
Sep. 27th, 2009 08:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ironymaideni think it was ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mrdorbin i told that i hadn't had much trouble with Vista and it seemed like the complaints were overwrought.
i was dead wrong.
it all started with me making a mistake.
i finally settled on a desktop linux distribution and the dual boot was working like a dream. this morning i was merrily doing important stuff like downloading a new icon set, when i discovered that i had made the disc partition for linux too small. d'oh.
no worries, Vista has a partition manager you can use to safely resize the windows partition. except that it wants 600+ GB of space, even though it's only using 32GB...so i dicked around for quite a while researching that and trying different things.
i ultimately said fuck it and reparted the disk with gparted; linux moved joyfully and easily, Vista broke. no surprise, i had a recovery disk waiting.
first bad sign - Vista recovery disk won't let me repair, only reinstall. and perhaps it all would have been fine except for the part where Vista refused to recognize the ethernet card. Vista uses the internet A LOT. it's pretty broken without the ability to do its updates. oh, and it also didn't like the graphics card, so no aero.
bad ethernet driver. and it refuses to install the driver i got from the manufacturer, sneakernet from another computer. even though i am following the instructions from Microsoft. and i can install it in 'safe mode' but that doesn't mean that the damn thing likes it in normal mode. and it also won't take a usb connection directly to the modem, even though i have the install disc that it asks for.
meanwhile, Vista reinstall overwrote grub (the thing that lets me dual boot) which was expected. i had no problem finding the right tools to get back into the linux install, which was completely functional and had many shiny new gigabytes in its partition. and the ethernet worked fine in linux. instructions to permanently fix grub were easy to find, worked on the first try, and took about two minutes.
ultimately, i was able to get another copy of the driver from my computer manufacturer, with a wizard that tricked the fucking thing into using the same files i'd been trying to feed it for hours.
and there were many other adventures along the way.
between that and the hours of Windows update running since, i've spent the entire day dicking with this thing. i knew that i was going to break stuff, but that was the sorriest reinstall i've ever experienced.
one more firewall tweak, and then i'm logging out. and i'm not touching Vista again unless i need it for work.
mrdorbin i told that i hadn't had much trouble with Vista and it seemed like the complaints were overwrought.i was dead wrong.
it all started with me making a mistake.
i finally settled on a desktop linux distribution and the dual boot was working like a dream. this morning i was merrily doing important stuff like downloading a new icon set, when i discovered that i had made the disc partition for linux too small. d'oh.
no worries, Vista has a partition manager you can use to safely resize the windows partition. except that it wants 600+ GB of space, even though it's only using 32GB...so i dicked around for quite a while researching that and trying different things.
i ultimately said fuck it and reparted the disk with gparted; linux moved joyfully and easily, Vista broke. no surprise, i had a recovery disk waiting.
first bad sign - Vista recovery disk won't let me repair, only reinstall. and perhaps it all would have been fine except for the part where Vista refused to recognize the ethernet card. Vista uses the internet A LOT. it's pretty broken without the ability to do its updates. oh, and it also didn't like the graphics card, so no aero.
bad ethernet driver. and it refuses to install the driver i got from the manufacturer, sneakernet from another computer. even though i am following the instructions from Microsoft. and i can install it in 'safe mode' but that doesn't mean that the damn thing likes it in normal mode. and it also won't take a usb connection directly to the modem, even though i have the install disc that it asks for.
meanwhile, Vista reinstall overwrote grub (the thing that lets me dual boot) which was expected. i had no problem finding the right tools to get back into the linux install, which was completely functional and had many shiny new gigabytes in its partition. and the ethernet worked fine in linux. instructions to permanently fix grub were easy to find, worked on the first try, and took about two minutes.
ultimately, i was able to get another copy of the driver from my computer manufacturer, with a wizard that tricked the fucking thing into using the same files i'd been trying to feed it for hours.
and there were many other adventures along the way.
between that and the hours of Windows update running since, i've spent the entire day dicking with this thing. i knew that i was going to break stuff, but that was the sorriest reinstall i've ever experienced.
one more firewall tweak, and then i'm logging out. and i'm not touching Vista again unless i need it for work.
