Sunday, 22nd May 2005
Laptop Problem Solved and Sister bought a car
I woke up this morning and was desperate to get to best buy to sort out what was the problem with the laptop. Since it was weekend, the store opens slighty later and plus i dont have a car, so i needed to check up on bus schedules and plan my trip (i know it seems like i'm making a big deal of it !!! but it did seem that way).
i get to Bestbuy where they tell me that even to diagnose it they would charge me $59 !!! .. yikes no way, so i think i'm better off calling the manufacturer and since the product is still under warranty i think its the best option (compared to getting fleeced for $59 !!! ... i know you agree too)
So i go home and call compaq and (to no suprise of mine) reach a call centre in india and get a guy who gives his business name as peter. Peter tells me that by installing a diffent operating system, i am voiding the warranty. I feel this utter bull crap and i should be able to install any damn OS i want to. I explain my problem to him and tell him that all i want now is for the laptop to get back to the state it was when i bought it with XP home installed and that i would take it from there.
Peter tells me to try the procedure of booting up using the CD after removing the battery and running only on AC power (like that would be of any use) and then he asked me to try resetting the RAM. I have no idea how this would have had any effect, but my hunt for a screw driver proved futile and i ended up telling him that i couldnt get the RAM out. Peter said that i should try later and call them back and gave me a case number to call them back.it was then i mentioned that i had been able to do a successful linux install, but wasnt able to do an XP install why ???.Then a very valuable suggestion (and about time) from peter was to try and delete the linux ext3 parition since Windows doesnt recognise ext3 partitons.But i didnt know how to do this from linux install since in the linux install and anaconda, even if you choose to delete the partitions, it wont actually do the delete till you choose a new root partition which would not serve the purpose.
so i googled on my roomie's laptop for tips on how to delete linux paritions and voila i had the answer right there use fdisk to delete the partitions.. easy enough .. but how do i get to fdisk. Windows doesnt even go to boot menu. Now is when i couldnt find my faithful old Windows 98 boot CD. I googled a little more and found that there was a rescue mode during linux install (which i had never noticed) which got you to a simple kernel and shell prompt.
Here i ran fdisk and deleted the partitions. And for safety i ran the dd utility, writing all 0's to the MBR and the entire disk as well. So everything was now fully cleaned.i then booted up with XP Pro and voila, things went sailing smootly from then. It took me all day to setup all my programs though.
Sister bought a car
when i was waiting for the bus on my way back from Best buy, my sister called an told me that they bought a car, a Nissan Pathfinder. Here i was sitting on the street, waiting for a bus, dreaming of the day i will have a car and herez my sister telling me she just bought an SUV.all week long they had been car hunting, calling me and asking me for directions etc, which i dutifully did using maps.google.com. Satellite view just rocks !!!.
Posted by Nikhil on Sunday, 22nd May 2005 in TechoBabble | Life in General