Gots a story to tell you .....


Despite my better sense shouting  "NO !!   Don't do it"  I tried to fix my Win XP installation on my old white box computer.

Now I am not a computer newbie, I have had Microsoft boxes since they came out with DOS 2.0 and I have reloaded and fixed and scrubbed and recovered and defragged since back when the terms were even invented.

At one time I actually ran a computer repair/refurb company called DOS Compatibles whose bread and butter was slapping 386sx clone motherboards into existing cases for businesses who could get some dollars for "repairwork" but could not get Finance to release a penny to replace an outdated (but still working) PC.

So I "repaired" dozens and dozens of them .....    

Anyhow, I ain't a newbie.   I knew it was gonna be fun, but I did it anyway (against my better judgement as my Linux was working fine).

First, the drive D recovery partition wouldn't come up when you F10'd at boot.   This sorta told me the worm had bitten deep deep into the Microsoft installation and had done its worst.  It had gotten to all the partitions and drives ...

So I went and got my stone cold legal boxed CD copy of XP and tried to boot from it -- and the darn thing wouldn't read.   Not on any machine I own -- the CD disk was bad.

Leave it to Bile to put an hidden age limit on his operating systems disks to make sure you HAVE buy his new windows 7 or 8 or whatever --  Bile SUX, have I ever mentioned that?   I paid over a hundred dollars for that darn disk, and it doesn't work !!!!

I'm pissed now -- I start going to IT sites and hitting the search functions.  There has to be a dos command line means of cranking the drive D recovery partition up completely apart from Windows which ain't gonna be a working otherwise.   I have me a bootable DOS CD.

.... and there was

So, I got HP's recovery disk drive:d to crank and I dumped back all the obsolete shitware they put on the machine when it was new.   I say shitware because there was a lot of it and the XP was the old Media pack system back then too.  

It was a big pile of outdated crapware.

I spent 6 hours trimming crap and then updating XP back to a decent level of service pack level 2 (which won't run sp3 -- now explain that one to me, Bile).   Virus protected, scraped, cleaned, dollied up, defragged, compacted, printer drivers loaded, Office 97 loaded and ready to go again.

I'm done, it works and I already miss my Linux because XP is soooo slow to load stuff and do even simple things.

OK, I keep saying Linux is better, so I'm gonna get it back and jest see what it takes to do that time-wise compared to putting Bile's stuff back into running shape (6 hours of deleting, scraping and tuning).


Start

15 minutes -- Go on line and look for "Recover Mint from a Windows re installation".   Find that "Boot Repair Disk" exists and where to download the ISO for it.

15 minutes -- Download ISO and burn it to a CD

5 minutes -- Cold boot to the CD which analyses my old white box, tells me my Linux partitions are still there and workable and gives me a one click choice to make (which one do you want to boot first? Windows or Mint?)

Reboot the machine, Grub2 comes up and gives me my choices and everything works again.

Mind you, I could have completely reinstalled Mint in less than the 35 minutes I spent, but you see I got back my full Linux Mint installation with all the games set up, tuned & working and all my customizations for this and that INTACT which was worth the 35 minutes I spent.

6 hours fighting with Bile's stuff or 35 minutes to put your Linux back the way it was ....   now what stuff works better again?


========================


Now here's the kicker -- Windows is gonna get crapped up again within the next year or so by some new virus/worm/trojan/rootkit and I will get more and more reluctant to try to fix it ever again because more and more it simply isn't worth it .....

And I will be darn if I pay Bile another penny for any more of his hundred dollar OS CD's that don't work when you need them to.



Reactos/Wine/Crossover  ----   baby, here I come ....  

This is why WinTel is so great for hobbyists - there's ALWAYS something to do. I'm typing this on an iPad. My 2001 iMac sits quietly behind me; it's old, it's slow - and it works, having received technician attention just once in it's lifetime. Oh, and Adobe/Flash just admitted Steve was right...

I hope I didn't just make a bunch of enemies, but I really feel that for people who aren't skilled technicians, who just want to USE their computers, Mac is the friendly, R E L I A B L E answer. And, what's a virus?

Got virus and spy ware,Go to Microsoft and get (Microsoft Security Essentials)  Its free and works better than the one I bought.

Built2Last wrote on 11/13/11 at 11:39:14:


+1  

 
How about this then ..... lets count up the money we have sent to Bile over the years.   He has always wanted $80 for a legal copy of his simpler OS products and he has always wanted $200 for his Microsoft Office product.    You paid at least $50 for each PC you bought (hidden OS cost in the price).  So let's go with the lowest cost possible -- $50 for each PC and $150 for each Office upgrade you had to buy because everybody else did (and you couldn't open their stinkin' files .....)

Between raising a daughter and keeping a wife in functioning technology I have bought 10 PCs or laptops over the years.   I have bought 2 boxed legal copies of OS's on top of that (had to have them ready for whenever I had to have them -- kid in college and all that).   Wife has required 3 Microsoft Office upgrades so far .... and that last one was a real ouch lemme tell ya.

That's near a thousand dollars just for Bile's stuff -- now add in the stuff he didn't sell you like anti-virus subscriptions, Go Back, PC Tools, Symantec Gold, Nero Burn, Ghost, etc etc etc.

Thousands and thousands of dollars over the years ....  (all obsolete now)

Now, ask me again which stuff WORKS better?

Linux stuff

Apple stuff (so I hear from my daughter, anyway)


Which stuff is always completely backwards compatible and the old and the new get along just fine together?  (ie can always read the older files)

..... that thins the herd a bunch -- just Linux

Apple is the world's worse for dropping file support for their old platforms every 4-5 years completely and Bile has gotten so he only will open files from 2 revs back, no more.  

Heck, his newer OS products won't even use software written prior to Vista and THEY SAY WIN 8 ISN'T GOING TO BE BACK COMPATIBLE FOR MUCH OF ANYTHING OTHER THAN WIN 7 ....

Jump off the upgrade merry go round and get something that works good with what you got now ....


    ..... you do know how to clear your browser audio and video cache, right?   You do, don't you?     Hit F9 ....

       Hey, nice OS & browser you got there (snicker snicker)

While you were watching the funny words a HUGE audio file was sucked down and told to run to completion, all of which is considered legal and proper use of windows and browser commands -- it ain't even a virus or a malware, just Bile's good 'ol stuff in action.  

This file is judged You Tube legal and still remains there today for you to look at .... and listen to .... and listen to .... and listen to .... and listen to .... and listen to .... and listen to .... and listen to .... and listen to ....


Biliousness in motion

As far as Bill Gates goes, consider his statement in the context of what we've discussed here: "The world today has 6.8 billion people... that's headed up to about 9 billion. Now if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we could lower that by perhaps 10 or 15 percent."



http://www.naturalnews.com/029911_vaccines_Bill_Gates.html












Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/029911_vaccines_Bill_Gates.html#ixzz1ddfY8t5l

Windows is backwards compatible. I don't blame John Deer for faulty equipment because I drive my lawnmower into a tree. Most people using computers should take a class first since it seems to be freakin hard to use one.

Once Windows is knoced off the top tier, you're gonna see a bazillion Linux/Apple problems as far as virus and crap... that kinda stuff is gonna plague computers for all eternity...

Bill has my vote over Steve... and he's more successfull in the PC department for a reason... just like andriod (linux) is crushing the iphone...

This is a Cray 2 computer, the supercomputer that made the term supercomputer real to the whole world.  

It runs in a circulating bath of something similar to freon and it requires a dedicated cooling mechanical plant 20 times bigger than it is just to keep it running.

It was used to model the hydrogen bomb.  It was used to crack codes in the cold war.   NSA was built using them.   It was worth millions to buy one (and they were top secret for years & years before you ever heard about them).  

ran Unix back in the day, the current ones now run Linux, all of them do, no matter what country owns them.  No other operating system can handle the massive parallel core structure.

The original Internet was invented so just these babies could talk to each other despite a nuclear war taking out half the Ma Bell regional switching center cities.

Your new cell phone has 2x more processing power than this computer ....

Your new wrist watch has far more processing power than NASA used to send people to the moon .....

Tegra 3 (Kal El) chips will have 5 times the processing power of this computer which was used to keep track of all of America during the Cold War.  They are selling right now in cell phones and tablets.

The Tegra 4 Wayne chip (Batman) that comes out in 2013 will have 20 times the processing power of the Cray 2 super computer and will be able to run anybody's software and even run Direct X 11 for games.   This is a cell phone chip that is as powerful as the existing Intel chipsets.

For your cell phone and tablets ....

You really have no idea how much is gonna change in the next 20 years.


================


Meet Raspberry Pi, a $25 ($35 with full LAN socket and 2 USB ports) that British children will be given in elementary school as they begin to learn technology.  

Each kiddie will build his own computer from the motherboard up ....

They will be given it to learn programming and computer structure as the Brits have recognized they HAVE to teach this stuff or Brits will become "backward 3rd world citizens" within the next few decades.  

The Brits are running scared as their existing pool of technology people are getting old and there is nobody to replace them ....  

(their liberal socialist education system quit teaching it a while back)

This is a fully functional computer that is as powerful as my old white box sitting next to my feet right now ...  $35 -- taking orders now for delivery in December - January.   This is real.  This is now.




Kids in the Far East are immersed in education and technology and are actively trained up by their parents with diligence and discipline to be successful little technologists -- while our kids play video games and blog and brain rot their way through school taking drugs.

Think about it ...

We were once a great country.    

We led the world for the first 2/3 of my life.

Now the Brits are giving all their kids Cray 2 supercomputers to learn how programming and computer structure works .....

And we are still giving our kids the bullshite "no child left behind" liberal nonsense the Brits are now replacing with some real education.