As much of a handle as I’ve gotten on many of my neurotic behaviors—and there were once many more than there are now—there is a certain flavor of computer problem of which I can’t turn loose to save my damned life. That sumbitch shall be solved before I stop. Generally I’m doing something at or near the top of my understanding, and it doesn’t quite work, but its failure presents clues to how I might proceed, and some competent search engine work refines the problem further, and it’s just like peeling an onion, and I have to peel it.
Did you know that a bootable Windows XP installation disc has a significant chance of flaking out and doing nothing if you try to boot a system on which the hard drive contains a Linux partition? Yup, you get the “Setup is inspecting your hardware…” message, and all looks well, but then it drops right the hell on out. Well, I didn’t know that. If you didn’t either, now you do. Why would it care? There is no logical reason that it would. But it does.
Know what you do about it? You go make a GParted CD, boot with that, and delete the partition.
Then you reboot with your Windows installation disc, and it works slick as a greased otter.
And God bless the Internet and people who take the time to explain solutions, for there they almost always are when I come looking for them.
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