How I spend my Tuesday nights.

Every now and then, I convince myself that I ought to try Linux again.  The temptation of a stable, simple, and fast operating system really appeals to me.  Inevitably, a friend much smarter than I will remind me that this is an absolutely fucking awful idea, and that I’ll regret it in five hours.  This is because when I install Linux, I usually end up with a broken Linux install (fucking KDE).  Then, I will attempt to uninstall Linux and in the process, nearly destroy my Windows install.  Tonight was no different.
I started off by installing openSUSE because I’ve never been dumb enough to try it before.  Compiz and all that allure, you know.  I attempted to install both Ubuntu and Fedora earlier, but they were causing significant issues for me during installation.  openSUSE worked fine, and so I got right down to fucking it up by trying to install compiz and all that glitters under KDE.  Naturally, everything stopped working, and my attempts to switch to Gnome were hindered when I realized that I had run out of space.  Apparently, 10gb isn’t enough for a Linux operating system.

Annoyed that KDE could hardly fucking function and I couldn’t reasonably switch to Gnome, I decided I’d say fuck it and uninstall.  I’d then expand the partition and install Ubuntu on it.  Simple!

After much dicking around in Ubuntu’s install, which by the way has gotten worse every time I use it, I finally figured out which partition is what, I get to installing.  I have two hard drives, which isn’t the novelty that I thought it would be.  One of which never gets used, and the other is my 1 terabyte monster that I have Windows 7 and Ubuntu attempting to share.  The installation went fine and dandy until Ubuntu trie to install grub, told me it can’t fucking do it, then froze up and forced me to restart.  As I do, I know I’m going to be confronted with a bitching grub complaining that it can’t find Linux and apparently hasn’t been programmed to handle booting Windows without it.

Surprise!

So I googled around, and tried to rebuild boot loaders via my command line (accessed by pressing F8 before Windows 7’s boot-up – nifty!!) to no avail.  Grub is still screaming and crying and I can’t get it to shut the fuck up.  Eventually I realize that grub is on the one terabyte hard drive, whereas Windows boot loader is for some fucked up reason on the OTHER drive.  This strikes me as an awful, spaghetti situation that I simply must rectify even though I can avoid it so easily.  I figured it’d bite me in the ass later if I didn’t deal with it.

After booting into Windows 7 (no thanks to grub), I googled some more and found EasyBCD, which can apparently rid my life of Grub once and for all.  I downloaded it, installed, and in an act of sheer stupidity pressed a wrong button.

In my defense, the button doesn’t ask you for clarification, and it fucking lists internal hard drives as available options.  The option to turn what SHOULD be a USB or floppy or whatever into a bootable piece of hardware for repair.

… shit.

I quickly realized my mistake and upload my essay that I need to print tomorrow to my FTP, just in case this was more fucked up than I anticipated.  eI reset my computer fearing the worst, that I may have just wiped my hard drive in an act of sheer retardation.

Windows doesn’t boot.  I begin to panic.  It gives me an error I’ve never fucking seen.  I try to use my F8 trick from before but no luck.  With quick thinking, I realize I can make a bootable USB stick on my MacBook with a recovery CD on it, and hopefully fix this shit.

The following is why nobody likes Macs:

You can’t fucking do that.  you can fucking try, and try I fucking did, but you can’t do it.  At least, not easily.  I must’ve installed five or six different programs of various nature to get it done.  Macs hate .ISOs, so you have to convert it to .DMG.  Oh, but Disk Utility doesn’t like the so called "source" of the image.  After fucking around for an hour, I eventually found some command lines that would allow me to make a bootable USB stick.  Naturally, command lines have no progress bars or helpful hints, but it was all I had.
After waiting a good three minutes, the terminal tells me it’s done and it worked.  Excellent.  I pop the thing into my PC, and try to boot off it.  No such luck.  I’m once again given the same bizarre message about my boot loader being fucked.

I started panicking more.  I started texting friends (at 2am) to ask if they were awake and had a Windows 7 repair CD.  I started digging through my shit trying to find a blank CD that I could burn something onto.  I dug through some old, old boxes that I never expected to go through and found my holy grail:  my beta copy of Windows 7!

I popped it in and was thrilled to discover that it worked!  I figured it would be a quick google, a couple easy commands, and bam!  I could boot into Windows 7 again.  But life is never so easy.
I tried every sort of bootfix fixmgr shit I could get my hands on.  Nothing worked.  I tried on both partitions.  Nothing fucking worked.  I even ran the useless ‘repair startup’ thing four times.  Eventually I just rebooted and watched as my computer demanded I press a button in order to use the CD. The time passed and…

what the fuck.

I was presented with a boot screen.  I could access Windows.  It works.  Did I fix it?  I remove the CD and try to boot of my harddrives.  Grub ws still being a whore, and my other drive is telling me it lost it’s keys or something.  Nevertheless, I knew I had guaranteed access to Windows …somehow – I still don’t understand that miracle.  Why does a repair CD when not activated present a boot screen?  Important miracle!

Eventually I found the Wiki for the EasyBCD thing, and found it loaded with information.  I found out how to restore the Vista bootloader after a "nuclear holocaust".  Sounded right to me.  I follow each instruction carefully, slowly.  There was phase 1, which should’ve fixed the problem.  No fucking luck.  Figures.  I try phase 2, which should’ve fixed the problem.  No fucking luck, Windows is still fumbling in he dark.  I try phase 3.  Same deal.  I felt at a loss because clearly nothing was going to fix this.  I figured though, why not bother trying Grub one more time before I jump off a cliff?

AND Grub is gone.  Even though all the commands I executed were DONE ON AND DIRECTED AT THE DRIVE THAT DIDN’T HAVE GRUB (???????????), it was gone and had been replaced with the ugly, but fucking FUNCTIONAL Vista bootloader.  Windows 7 booted, no problem.  Linux is off my system, Grub has gone the fuck home somehow, and I have a nice, stable, Windows 7 only drive.  The other one that I never use refuses to boot.  I imagine I need to reinstall the Windows XP bootloader or whatever that’s on it, but I don’t really care.  I think I’ll just steal the useful files off it, format it, and install Ubuntu.
Except my monitor is covered in green post-its that say DON’T EVER INSTALL LINUX AGAIN.