Quake3World

Went to go install Debian on to my main desktop pc next to my Windows XP installation.

First, the cd I had used to install Debian on my laptop now had a corrupt file and installation would fail in short order.

Ok, so went and downloaded a new image. Installed, went to partition the disk to make room for Debian. Free Space was too small? Booted in to XP and ran chkdsk to see whats up and got things sorted. Went back to partitioning and lopped off 30 gigs from the XP partition to use for Debian. Cool beans.

Well, restarted the computer and apparently I fucked the master boot record pretty hard because I get "Error loading operating system" instead of, well, an operating system.

Didn't have my Windows XP Recovery disc so I finally got the GAG boot loader running off my usb stick and booted from that.

Booted in to Debian. Apparently it's missing a ton of crap now and defaulted to the ash shell. Whatever.

Now I'm in Windows XP again working on repairing the MBR and making Debian stop being a whore

I think this is an issue with neither Windows or Debian but a PEBCAK: Problem Exists Between Computer And Keyboard. =)

MBR fixed pretty easily once I was able to get back in to Windows XP.

I think the issue lies with my cd-rom drive (I've suspected the bastard ever since it started failing to recognize blank CDs). The installation goes on until it's halfway through loading installation components from the CD then it fails and says it can't read from the CD and that I should check its integrity.

Tried using a USB stick but it's really bent on trying to get at a cd-rom for the drivers needed to complete the netinstall...

Tried loading the missing drivers from removable media and it's not seeing the other usb stick. Fun.

Downloading Ubuntu 9.10 x64 right now and going to see if that fails on cd-rom reading as well just for the hell of it.

Long story short, it was the cd-rom as I suspected.

I pulled a DVD drive out of a vista machine and popped it in my computer and the installation went on without a hitch (ignoring the several times Software Selection and Installation failed on me and the partitioning section crapped out because the dvd-drive powered down (still had its power hooked to the vista's PSU which would go idle if left alone too long which shut the drive down)

Running latest 64 bit version of Debian now. Finally. Also found out my machine can run a 64 bit operating system. Neat.

You didn't know this already? You can run a 64 bit OS on any system that has a 64 bit cpu. Which pretty much all of the newer ones have been for a fair while now.

I built this machine in like 2006 or somewhere around there and had completely forgotten I was using a 64 bit cpu so yeah, didn't know