Computer: Argh. When I bought my laptop, I had no option but to buy it with Windows XP — IBM doesn’t seem to sell them any other way. (you can pay extra to buy it that way from EmperorLinux, but really, the main reason I wouldn’t want it is to save money, I’m afraid.)
Anyway, so I kept the XP partition safe, and jumped through various hoops to keep it in one piece; after all, it had cost me money to pay for that Windows license, and you never know when I might need it to upgrade some firmware or whatever.
Well, after trying (twice) to upgrade some firmware — the BIOS, namely, to get APM hibernation working — and having XP crash on me both times, I left it for a bit.
That was a couple of weeks ago. I just tried to check some files on the /windows partition — and something has scribbled all over the FAT32 sectors. Rien de Windows plus. :(
(Prime suspect right now is the Phoenix BIOS ‘suspend-to-disk’ tool — I just looks flakey, and I know it goes in and tweaks with some kind of undocumented BIOS wierdness. I bet anything it’s told the BIOS that the first FAT32 partition was a suspend partition, and one of the failed susp-to-disk attempts scribbled all over it.)
I suppose I’ll probably reinstall at some stage… if only to get this bloody BIOS upgraded and suspend-to-disk working!