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[Diuretic]

I'll know I'm a geek when Gentoo runs on my machine

In the meanwhile - I thought this was a very good article:

Linux is NOT Windows

If you've been pointed at this page, then the chances are you're a relatively new Linux user who's having some problems making the switch from Windows to Linux. This causes many problems for many people, hence this article was written. Many individual issues arise from this single problem, so the page is broken down into multiple problem areas.

Can't help with Bob's issue. At work all our machines (XP Pro) are partitioned on the hard disk C for bootup and system and D for storage. And that's about all I know. I have Knoppix on a usb stick but if I use it at work I'll get my arse kicked

 

[KittenKoder]

Excellent article Diuretic.

 

[Diuretic]

Excellent article Diuretic.

Credit to the members of the Australian Ubuntu email discussion list KK

 

[KittenKoder]

Excellent article Diuretic.

Credit to the members of the Australian Ubuntu email discussion list KK

Thus is the reason I love Linux ... especially Ubuntu .. it's a community not a soulless corporation. But meh, I encourage everyone to try Ubuntu before knocking it, anyone who just blindly attacks Linux or even Mac without having used them annoys the hell out of me. I don't much like Mac, but I haven't really used it extensively, but that's just a personal opinion ... I don't like Windoze ... because of the corporation that produces it now more than any reason ... but I've used it a lot in the past. My comparisons are based on that experience, not just some list offered by someone interested in selling a product. Though it's been too long to offer extremely accurate advice on Windoze, I can still help in some areas because of experience, but I always recommend trying Ubuntu if all else fails ... why not? It's free, can dual boot (thus keeping your Windoze in case you don't like it) and I can help better. People assume I am just "attacking" Windoze when I do this ... really I'm not, I'm making a recommendation based on experience. The programs I write are Java ... anyone can run them on any OS ... so meh, that has no impact on what I recommend. Still though ... people just need to ... as the article mentioned ... think out side the box.

 

[DiveCon]

KK, just so you know, XP will boot to any drive you set it to boot to
its not limited to drive C:
what likely happened is corruption on his C drive file system so it lost its boot files

 

[KittenKoder]

KK, just so you know, XP will boot to any drive you set it to boot to
its not limited to drive C:
what likely happened is corruption on his C drive file system so it lost its boot files

That's the final idea we came up with. I was doing a lot more in PM than on here, but yeah. The problem though that perplexes me at least, is that they had the OS installed on a second drive and it wouldn't boot from that, so I did a fall back to old Windoze and recommended they physically swap them for that reason. Needless to say ... I couldn't help this time ... though I did not make matters any worse luckily.

 

[JW Frogen]

I own a computer. I do you know.

I am on it right now.

Boooooooooooo!

 

[KittenKoder]

I own a computer. I do you know.

I am on it right now.

Boooooooooooo!

I thought you were connected to the internet some other way. ... and that you were posting through psychic connections.

 

[JW Frogen]

I own a computer. I do you know.

I am on it right now.

Boooooooooooo!

I thought you were connected to the internet some other way. ... and that you were posting through psychic connections.

So did I until all you techno Gods started this thread.

 

[DiveCon]

KK, just so you know, XP will boot to any drive you set it to boot to
its not limited to drive C:
what likely happened is corruption on his C drive file system so it lost its boot files

That's the final idea we came up with. I was doing a lot more in PM than on here, but yeah. The problem though that perplexes me at least, is that they had the OS installed on a second drive and it wouldn't boot from that, so I did a fall back to old Windoze and recommended they physically swap them for that reason. Needless to say ... I couldn't help this time ... though I did not make matters any worse luckily.

i think it does boot to the new boot drive, just "bob" wants to retrieve the files on the dead drive.
i doubt he will be able to do so
and he doesn't have the driver disk for his LAN controller so he cant access the internet to get the rest of the drivers


at least thats where i believe he is at

 

[KittenKoder]

KK, just so you know, XP will boot to any drive you set it to boot to
its not limited to drive C:
what likely happened is corruption on his C drive file system so it lost its boot files

That's the final idea we came up with. I was doing a lot more in PM than on here, but yeah. The problem though that perplexes me at least, is that they had the OS installed on a second drive and it wouldn't boot from that, so I did a fall back to old Windoze and recommended they physically swap them for that reason. Needless to say ... I couldn't help this time ... though I did not make matters any worse luckily.

i think it does boot to the new boot drive, just "bob" wants to retrieve the files on the dead drive.
i doubt he will be able to do so
and he doesn't have the driver disk for his LAN controller so he cant access the internet to get the rest of the drivers


at least thats where i believe he is at

The truly strange thing is that if they had Linux on one drive I could have walked him through a very simple set of steps to accomplish this, even without the boot sectors and file system there are ways to get the files from a hard drive just by mounting it. Or hell, even in old MS-DOS I could have walked him through it ... but Windoze XP ... bah! Been too long since I got that technical with it and the tech support he contacted made matters worse.

Also, no, he couldn't get it to even boot up through the secondary drive, that's why all the problems occurred in the first place. As I have said, the file system for Windoze is shoddy at best for highly technical stuff, if I had been right there I may have been able to remember it all, but over the net I just couldn't help with that. Winidoze 98 or older I would have just walked him through a DOS boot and file scan, there use to be a cool utility that came with DOS which allowed you to recover files even without a file system, but alas, they got rid of that in XP.