Why I detest formats

Thread Starter

Georacer

Joined Nov 25, 2009
5,182
I 've been less than active the last two days. My system hadn't been formatted since last June, and it desperately needed one.

A friend of mine got his hands on a free "malfunctioning" nVidia 8800gtx. After a short bake, it was good as new. So we tried to SLI it with my 8800gts, it being a cheaper version of 8800gtx. We had a couple of hours trying to work them in SLI mode, downloading nVidia drivers and 3rd party ones. Motherboard BIOS upgrades didn't help but add to my frustration by creating problems on the side. No luck. They see each other, but don't want to pair. I work them in parallel for now. Will try with another 8800gts some time later.

On the same time, I decided to add 4GB or RAM to the existing 2GB. I just went to the nearest store of the largest retail supplier in the country and bought myself two Corsair DDR2. Once in the system, the PC denied to boot. After a few trials I discovered that one of them was dysfunctional. It was the second time in 3 RAM purchases that this happened to me. I returned them to the service department yesterday. As I expected it, they needed 4 hours to check my application, so I had to pick them today. However, today, due to protests on the area, the service office is closed.

Not wanting to do a fresh format and then having to re-install a dozen of software in my PC, taking up several hours, setting up and configuring, I decided to use my friend's PC recovery system image, which he had already used in 4 PCs and laptops. As expected, the image refused to boot in the end, regardless of the Windows' boot disk to repair the installation. In the end I ended up having to re-install a dozen of software in my PC, taking up several hours, setting up and configuring, AFTER spending another one trying to make the image work.
I 'm taking my own image now, I refuse to go through this again.

In short, this is why I detest formats.
 

nsaspook

Joined Aug 27, 2009
13,081
The wonders of Windows. It's system of installing applications using OS file and system library modifications makes total crash recovery a problem.
 

Thread Starter

Georacer

Joined Nov 25, 2009
5,182
Fair enough, but does Linux have the variety of software that Windows does? I like a little spice in my soup, even if that gives me a heavy stomach later.
 

luvv

Joined May 26, 2011
191
Agree 100%

Disc cloning is the only way to go,Windows restores are unreliable to say the least.

Equally backing up drivers,registry, program files individually is a mass pain in the keister..

Can't wait till SSDs are 100$ for 1TB w/ that and cloud storage +Gigabit networks soon we can clone our drives as fast as we can do Windows Restores.

Imagine having a image automatically made and uploaded before you make a change to your pc drivers,software ,registry uploaded to a endless cloud drive.

Then you could just enter bios select a date from the images stored,instantly format the SSD and install fresh image from network drive,all in the time it takes to brew a pot of coffee.

A dream for people whom deal w/ destructive software,experimental drivers etc.

I can't wait :(
 

bertus

Joined Apr 5, 2008
22,270
Hello,

You can of course install both OS (windows and Linux) on one PC.
The demands for linux are not as hard as for windows.
You can make seperate partitions for linux.
A partition of 20 Gb is large enough to hold a huge share of programs (the root partition)
A partition of 2 Gb can be assigned as swap.
And a user partition as large as desired to hold the user data (the home partition, mine is 100 Gb).

As for gaming under linux take a look at this page of the WIKI:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_gaming

Bertus
 

Thread Starter

Georacer

Joined Nov 25, 2009
5,182
I 'm quite aware of Linux gaming. You discovered me, bertus, I love Windows for their games (and the Office suite). Call me a junkie. But don't compare Windows games with Linux ones. Retro is fine and all, but that's why I have flash games.

I had a Linux installation alongside with Windows in the past. The first time to experiment, the second to run some simulation software needed for coursework.

I got into the bug of commanding explicitly the machinery for some time, but then got tired of it. Call me soft, but I prefer enjoying an alien sun, even if the flies bother me, rather than building my sun from scratch, in the void.
 

thatoneguy

Joined Feb 19, 2009
6,359
Fair enough, but does Linux have the variety of software that Windows does? I like a little spice in my soup, even if that gives me a heavy stomach later.
You can load an XP virtual machine that will play most of the latest PC games around if you give it fullscreen. This isn't with WINE, but vmware's latest, it's very impressive.
 

nsaspook

Joined Aug 27, 2009
13,081
Fair enough, but does Linux have the variety of software that Windows does? I like a little spice in my soup, even if that gives me a heavy stomach later.
I'm a old fart that doesn’t play games on computers. (the last games I played a lot was the original FORTRAN version of this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossal_Cave_Adventure ) so Linux does everything I need for office type stuff (openoffice/Chrome/Firefox/etc..) , multimedia (mythtv/amarok/etc ..) and now with a stable version of MPLABX for unix it handles micro-controller projects nicely.
 

Thread Starter

Georacer

Joined Nov 25, 2009
5,182
A guy that has actually played text adventures? Wow, man, you are the stuff of legends!

Thatoneguy, my machine has trouble playing games at their native environment, you ask me to run them emulated? I think that will be another $1000 in hardware.
 

nsaspook

Joined Aug 27, 2009
13,081
Please! Sign my chest!
Where's my Sharpe. We had the source (FORTRAN 77 with extensions) for the Woods version of the game and made modifications to the code and message text to make a special "Navy" R rated version that was pretty popular with the data systems guys. I did the final checkout of a system that was being installed on ships and usually had a site commissioning party when we were done. The better the party, the more likely they got a copy of the game tape.
 
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Thread Starter

Georacer

Joined Nov 25, 2009
5,182
Looks like you were the man you wanted to know, in those circles.

I am a fan of all things gaming, but I admit I 've never played a text adventure. Maybe I ought to sample one someday - after I figure out how to emulate it.
 

Wendy

Joined Mar 24, 2008
23,415
I would like to pursue this sometime. I am not computer illiterate, but I've never figured out how to backup a computer in such a way if I reload a set of files it wakes up as it should. I've always figured I've left something out of the file set.

I have a house network, have since the early 1990s. Never learned to network in DOS, but my brother was good at that sort of thing.

I also have removable drive bays, so mirroring a hard drive would be possible.

I know there are a lot of options, but there seems to be a tendency to assume the users are uber stupid, or already know everything there is to know about the subject.
 

Wendy

Joined Mar 24, 2008
23,415
At the moment, though that could change over time. I'm not fond of MS trying to force me to use their list of hardware with the newer versions of windows.
 

Thread Starter

Georacer

Joined Nov 25, 2009
5,182
I used Norton Ghost for the backup too. It restores your drive through a bootable cd it creates, and pulls your saved drive image to recover your system.
 
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