Windows BARFS on Its Disk Partition AGAIN!!!
Ok, I'm officially mad. Steaming. Furious. I simply can't believe how awful Windows is, and (unfortunately) how gullible I am. Those who have been here on ZDNet UK for some time might remember that I bought this Fujitsu Lifebook S6510 shortly after I started my blog here. It came loaded with Vista Business, and a "fallback" DVD for XP Professional. I tried running Vista on it. I really tried, I really wanted it to work, and I said exactly that in my blog here. But it didn't. Every time I tried it, things started out looking promising, and after a month or two it would go belly-up. Three or four times I reloaded Vista from scratch and tried again, hoping that the latest Microsoft Updates would fix it. Eventually I gave up, reloaded one last time with XP Professional, and ran that with no problem for two years.
A month or so ago, through my own carelessness, I wiped the disk on this laptop. I had to reload everything from scratch, so (like a fool) I thought well, Vista SP2 is out, everyone says that it is "all fixed up now and works great, and reliably", so I'll try that again. I loaded Vista from scratch, added all the updates to SP2 and beyond, and I've been running it that way since. Until today. Yesterday I used this laptop, and everything was fine. I shut down normally, and there was no problem and no error messages. Today I tried to boot Vista, and it said that there was something wrong, Windows wouldn't boot, and offered to boot into the Recovery procedure. A minute or two of that and it became clear that it wasn't going to "Recover" anything, the only option was to reinstall Vista from scratch.
Good work, Microsoft. You have sunk to new lows. You are even worse that I had considered you to be. You, and the so-called operating system that you sell, are the lowest form of scum on the earth. Oh yes, I know, Microsoft and all of their apologists will be happy to tell me that it was my fault, I did something wrong (I didn't), I didn't have anti-virus installed (I did), I must have gotten a virus (I didn't), or a rootkit (I didn't), or I screwed up by rebooting at the wrong time when an update was installing (I didn't, and this isn't "patch Tuesday" week anyway, is it? Or is it 'patch everyday" with Microsoft now, considering all the out-of-cycle emergency patches they have been sending out). It's simple. Windows is unreliable garbage, it always has been, it always will be, and if you use it you should be willing to accept that risk.
I am no longer willing to accept that risk, even part-time as a secondary operating system on this laptop. Windows is gone, it has puked all over its disk for the last time here, and I will not reload it. I am in the process of transferring the data to one of the Linux partitions - yes, Linux is quite happy to read the partition that Windows says is hopelessly corrupted. When that is done, I will reformat that partition and load something reliable and useful on it. Perhaps CP/M, that would be infinitely better.
A very, very angry...
jw 26/5/2010
P.S. Please, PLEASE, unless you want to hear a very long string of words that I learned during my military service, do NOT tell me that the "solution" to this problem is to give Microsoft even more money and "upgrade" to Windows 7. First, if Vista is not stable, or reliable, then Microsoft should withdraw it and either offer a free "upgrade" to Windows 7 or offer a refund of the purchase cost. Second, and the reason I quote "upgrade" in these statements, I absolutely don't believe the Windows 7 is any better, any more stable or any more reliable than Vista. They come from Microsoft, they are utter garbage, and exchanging one pile of garbage for another is neither an "upgrade" nor a solution for any problem in my opinion. So don't even suggest it. Thank you.
jw