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Oh Windows, how you've failed me. (A Linux story)

So I was sitting on my lovely installation of XP Pro yesterday, having some fun and typing away and decided to check on the Windows Updates available. Well for some reason the Windows Update service really hates my netbook so I keep it turned off until I need it. So I start the service and go to the Windows Update site and check for updates... no luck. The site hangs at the message it's checking for updates. I find a nice site explaining how to fix it, I delete a folder and do some restarting of services and this fixes the issue. I find 20+ updates waiting for me so I download and install them feeling stupid for waiting so long to check for those life saving patches.

Office and .NET Framework patches take forever so I kick off the process and then walk away to watch the Bucs game with my parents, checking back during commercials and answering the various prompts I encounter. So finally it's all done, YAY!

I reboot and look back to watch the game, I see something out of the corner of my eye and when I look back I see that my PC is rebooting again. I watch it this time and am greeted with a flicker of a BSOD and then a reboot (to quick to see the error). I boot it into Safe Mode but nothing works... Start Menu won't open, Ctrl + Alt + Del is useless, Windows Key + anything won't work, I am pissed! So much for being the safe option...

I grab my XP CD and get ready to reinstall but decide to try rebooting it again... well this time it works but everything is EXTREMELY SLOW. It takes 5-10 minutes for my wireless adapter to kick on and then I have to force it to connect to my wireless network. Once that is on my e-mail and browser take about 3 minutes each to come up and accessing the System Restore option took almost 30 minutes (after which 2 instances popped up). I decide that I've had it and just turn the netbook off for the remainder of the night.

Fast forward 2AM. I woke up and booted into Windows only to find it won't take my password. After waking up more I realize that it's trying to log me into my Administrator account and not my user account. I login and check the users and see my account is missing. I check in the Documents and Settings and it only shows my admin account and All Users. So at this point my main account with all of my settings and happiness is gone. I decide it's time to boot into my trusty Fedora 13 installation that I had installed but had been neglecting for a while (210 updates were waiting for me). I get logged in and decide to do some tweaking and customizing: installed Chrome and Claws Mail, got my e-mail and bookmarks setup, mounted my NTFS partitions, installed VLC, removed Firefox, fought with Midori to check my webmail (no luck :(), and some other fun stuff. All in all I'm very happy with how Fedora is treating me so I have no urge to go back to Windows.

Funny thing though, I booted into Windows to setup Sync on Google to get my bookmarks and my user's account was back! I'll be reformatting the partition and installing a bare Windows XP install for school and work related stuff but I think this was the final straw for me and I'm moving on to the Linux lifestyle. :D

windows, linux, computers

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