XP Install Hell (Not Mine)

Dive into Mark has a hilarious post on the steps to install Windows XP and make it livable (via Jeremy). I wonder if Longhorn will be any better? Personally my experiences haven’t been quite so bad for the install part, but steps 60 and upwards are pretty much accurate. Too bad you can’t just mount your /home directory like you can in a unix. I know they have the file and settings transfer wizard but I haven’t used it because I have heard it transfers everything including tmp files, internet cache files, and crap like that. I found it easier to just spend the two days getting the files I need from my backup and then re-setting everything up.
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Category: Funny Stuff

2 Comments on “XP Install Hell (Not Mine)”

  1. s/hilarious/true/
    That’s one of the reasons I wanted to hold of with getting a new laptop, because the other one was hanging in while we were busy (well we still are). I spent at least 2 days setting up my new puter.
    I agree with the person who recommended that Jeremey use Windows 2000 instead of XP… XP is for the Fisher Price fans… the unfans end up spending hours disabling and clicking about to revert to the classic win98/win2k style.

  2. Personally, when using windows I stick with win2k. The “fisher price” look is ugly but changeable. What I hate is that everything that JUST got familiar with win95, 98, and 2k is now CHANGED in location in XP. Win2k is reasonably stable for me (just as stable as I found XP to be), and so I see no reason to upgrade.
    The only compelling reasons I could ever suggest XP to another person would be a) because they want support from MS (giggle) and they need it for as long as possible or b) because of some piece of hardware/software that is now pretty much XP only (which is rare).
    One quick note about the article, however. I have found that both Linux and OSX are pretty much resistant to the article’s identified problems. The steps for me to re-install OSX would be:
    1) Back up my /Applications/MyApps and /Users/delmar directory to a different location
    2) Reinstall OSX (30 minutes)
    3) Do the required updates (30 minutes)
    4) Copy /Applications/MyApps and /Users/delmar
    For a clean install, minus what little cruft OSX gives me, it would probably take about 2 hours more of finding the newest versions of applications, etc.
    In Debian it would be:
    1) Copy any files I need to keep
    1) put in CD and make sure net is connected
    2) answer all the stupid debian install questions that should be taken care of by a decent installer
    3) Copy back any files in /home/delmar I need
    Compared to the UNIXes, Windows is just a big PITA to install.