Just another rant about Windows...
Tuesday, April 11, 2006
Recently, my Windows hard drive was experiencing some very annoying problems. Everything was terribly slow using Windows and I couldn't open a single application without having to wait at least 10 minutes. Of course, this was rather annoying and my first thought was VIRUS! Sadly, the anti-virus scan failed, eventually just stopping after taking about one minute to scan each file. To say the least, I was quite livid by now. I was in no mood to re-install Windows AND Linux (Suse was working so well). See, the thing that really gets me about Windows is that it doesn't play nice with others... at all. I can't install Windows after Linux because Windows just HAS to over-write the master boot record and boot loader. So, I asked a fellow Linux user if there was any way around this most aggravating obstacle. He, in response, sent me this article: Linux+Win9x+Grub HOWTO. My hope was renewed, but with some skepticism. The HOWTO explains everything assuming that you have a single hard drive configuration with partitions for Windows and Linux. Yet, I still tried it, but to no avail. I couldn't get the boot-loader (Grub) to install properly once I had Windows reinstalled. So, now I am stuck with just Windows until I get my beloved Suse Linux 10.0 reinstalled. Perhaps the article mentioned above can give some other Linux/ Windows user in peril some help. I am sure the technique works, just with my lack of experience, I just couldn't pull it off. Well, yet another flaw with Windows exposed. One would think that with so many issues, I would just leave Windows off altogether, and believe me, if I could I would. But, I just can't say good-bye to some Windows only games like the Need for Speed series and other games/ applications that just won't run under Linux, or do so only through much hassle with Wine (which I haven't even attempted to use really). So ends my rant about Windows, perhaps just a necessary evil for now.
