Thursday, August 18, 2005

I Hate Windows

After getting a new 160 GB hard drive for college, I have just completed the tedious process of installing Windows XP Pro, updating Windows, installing SP1, updating SP1, installing SP2, and updating SP2.

Now I have to do it all over again!

Remember the "old days" of Windows 95 and 98 when we had that sill 2 Gig limit to hard drives (or was it 4? whatever). You'd think those days were over, but you'd be wrong. We haven't gotten rid of the Gigabyte Ceiling, we've just moved it. Apparently Windows XP versions prior to SP1 (such as the one on my install disk) can't handle drives larger than 137 GB. So I ended up with a 120 GB hard drive with the rest as "unused space".

Now I have to use Western Digital's tool to reformat the drive the way I want, install Windows onto a pertition it doesn't officially support, then hope updating to SP1 after-the-fact will make everything OK. And I'm going to a LAN party tomorrow, to boot.

I'm sure Longhorn/Vista will completely render this issue moot, but I have a sneaking suspicion I'll be ranting again when I, say, purchase my first 4 TB hard drive. (Probably won't be this number specifically, just using the example to make my point.)

I hate Windows.



In other news, I'll be off to college in less than a week. Yeah, I can't believe it either. Last couple of days I've been thinking about all the little things I'm going to miss. One of my friends has already left, and several more will be in a couple of days. Sad and exciting times.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Cut them some slack, Mike. They have to balance the size of disk data addresses with the likelihood of someone getting a freaking huge drive. And lets face it, who gets a 160gb harddrive except a HACKER!!

But seriously, why doesn't M$ just use a virtual filesystem like *nix? *nix doesn't even care if a directory is across the network for god's sake. Windows, on the otherhand, molests small children in its spare time.

Peace Out.