Well, it's been over two weeks since my last diary entry. I
guess I'll
start where I left off, the night of the Linux install.
I've installed linux before and thought this would be the
same type of thing,
just pop the CD in, intall the packages I want, and then
reboot to a LILO
prompt. Not this time, I install, reboot, and am welcomed
by the lovely
Windows 2000 boot up screen. Oops. Maybe it screwed up
near the end, the
X-Window at the time when it was finishing up looks kind of
strange, I'll
reinstall. Same thing. Well fugg. Maybe Windows 2000
doesn't like having
other OS's on the machine. That's simple, I'll just delete
Windows 2000. I
then wave good-bye to Windows for the last time. Litereally
waving, and
grinning, and waving. "Buh-bye! Buh-bye!"
This time during my Linux install I deleted the Windows 2000
partition
(keeping my fat32 data partition that I store at the end of
the drive). I
reboot and am greeted with the friendly message "No OS
found." Gee, that
sucks, maybe my Redhat 6.1 CD is bad, lets try a different
distro I know
works, Mandrake 7.0. "No OS found." Well, I guess getting
rid of the Windows
2000 partition doesn't make Windows any friendlier. Maybe
if I get Partition
Magic in there working on the boot sector I'll be able to
get it working. So
Partition Magic runs and tells me that one of the partitions
is to large and
asks me if I want to let it fix the partition. Sure! So
after that, PM
finishs loading and tells me that the entire disk is one bad
partition.
*eek!*
Well, it might just be PM, so I try to install Linux again
and get nada for my
data partition. Getting a little scared, I make a DOS
bootdisk with fdisk on
it and hope that that might fix it thinking that Win2K does
bad things to the
master bootrecord. So an one "fdisk /mbr" later, I am able
to go c: and see
all my lovely data. So what's my next move? Well, of
course I try to screw
up everything I have accomplished! Thinking that the MBR is
fixed, I
actually belived that maybe Linux will install. Nope. "No
OS found." I
twiddle with the PM/fdisk/diskdruid/install linux thing for
a few more hours
and finally give up being able to acess that c drive with my
data. It had
been over 10 hours and I got almost nothing accomplished.
I figure the next step would be to back up that data that I
love so much on a
friends hard drive, and just format the entire drive. My
friend sleeps late
however, so I got some sleep while waiting for the right
time to go over to
his house. I pop out my hard drive, put it in an
anti-static bag, and make my
way over to wake his sleeply butt up. He is nice enough to
loan me 600 megs
for a few days while I get my computer working, and I get to
go home knowing
that my data is safe.
(On a side note to this story, I got to watch him play
Diablo II. It seems
alot like the normal Diablo but with a few added extras. A
little more
strategy with the items. It steels an idea from FF7 about
adding gems to
weapons/armour that give you special abilities/upgrades.
I'd buy it if it ran
in Linux or if I could use to same CD to play the game in
both Linux and
Windows if I ever make the trip back to M$ land.)
When I get home, I try to grab some more sleep before I
begin battleing the
evil Win2K mbr. With my data safe, I start up Partition
Magic and fry the
entire drive. A complete format. Once again, I try to
install Redhat 6.1,
reboot and find the same message "No OS found." Arg! Does
it never die? I
scroung around my box of computer stuff and find the
manucaturers disk that
fixs all things hard-drive. This time I format it for real
and get linux up
and running.
Victory.
To be continued...