My XP Nightmare
J. Kevin Tumlinson

I broke the rule. The very first, most important rule of owning a PC. Never buy a new Windows operating system until it has been out for more than a year.

It started innocently enough. I had been planning to get XP for the past several weeks. I was impressed by the reviews I've read, intrigued by the praise, dazzled by the promises. There was that logical part of my brain that wasn't buying all the hype, but I decided that the features and abilities to be gained might just be worth the risk.

So, against the advice that I myself have given thousands over the past twenty or so years, I went out and bought the brand spanking new Windows XP operating system.

I'm an old hand at Microsoft operating systems. I cut my teeth on DOS, even anxiously awaited DOS 6.5. When Win 3.0 came out (back then known by the less Borg-like name of "Windows") I grabbed it, even though I was only using it as a supplement to DOS. It was eye candy. The REAL computing was going on to the right of a C: prompt.

Over time, I grudgingly came to accept that a graphics interface was the future (However, I did have a batch file based menu system that let me select whether I wanted to load Windows or go to the DOS prompt. Progress came slowly.) By the time Windows 95 came out, I was thrilled to have it. Of course, I waited the pre-requisite year and a half before picking up a copy and putting it on my beloved PC. It worked, great, though. If you chose to ignore the frequent hang-ups, the touchy and oversensitive dialogue boxes, the dreaded "blue screen of death." Fatal Exception Error became a standard part of my vocabulary.

All of the bugs, though, served to remind me of why I waited. Imagine what would have happened if I had gotten my hands on a first generation copy!

My expence with Win 95 cemented my philosophy of waiting to buy a new operating system. It boils down to the idea that everyone else will get it, run across the bugs, report them, and the manufacturer (i.e. Microsoft) will supposedly and hopefully fix those bugs and offer a new and improved OS. The system fails when hype over-rides your sense of logic and you rush out to buy the newest feather in Bill Gates' cap.

I broke the rule.

When I got my new copy of XP home, I installed it with no trouble. Well, almost no trouble. I ran into a teensy bit of hassle when it came to my DSL modem.

A couple of years ago, when I signed on to South Western Bell's DSL service, they offered me a USB modem. At the time, I had delusions of moving the modem from one computer to another as needed (home networking wasn't something I figured I'd really need at the time), and USB would really make things sail. I thought. The harsh reality was that I didn't care to move the modem at all, and would have gotten much greater benefit from a modem that utilized my network card.

By gones.

At any rate, my current problem was that Windows XP simply didn't recognize the drivers or software needed to operate my modem. I was already aware of this fact when the guy at tech support rudely told me that the manufacturer of my modem should have made it XP compatible when they built it, despite the fact that it was built two years before XP even existed!

I was in a bit of a connundrum. I needed a new driver for my modem, but the only quick way to get one was to go online and download it. This, of course, was an option that I didn't have at the time.

I devised a cunning plan. I used XP's built in ability to remove itself and restore the original operating system in tact. In this case, it would put my Windows 98SE back on stage. Then I would reload my DSL drivers, go online, download the new XP driver, re-install XP and my problems (up to that point) would be solved.

It went beautifully. If by "beautifully" you mean "horribly, horribly wrong."

I consider myself something of an expert on the Ways of Computer Zen. But I have to admit, I still have no clue what caused the following chaos.

To start, XP would no longer run its ugrade shell from Windows 98. It kept returning an error along the lines of "Win32NT unable to load." In Microsoft-ese, something wasn't working right.

I opted to use the little advertised, highly rumored method of loading it straight from the CD at the pre-Windows level. This involved going into my CMOS settings and telling the computer to boot from the CD-ROM first. With the Windows XP CD in the drive at startup the setup screen eventually appears and you can get the ball rolling.

The ball rolled, but it went down the wrong side of the hill. Before setup had gotten more than 2% through the install process it reported that certain DLL files couldn't be copied (DLL stands for "Digital Link Library." It's fancy Windows talk for "important files."). I shut off the install in frustration and did a few things that I now regret.

One of my bright ideas at this point was to wipe out everything that was on the hard drive and start fresh. I had already backed up my important files (another of the Great Rules) onto my second hard drive (this piece of information is important). So wiping out drive C: was no big deal. It just meant starting with a fresh operating system instead of one that had been warmed over. Without hesitation I reformatted drive C.

No luck. Same problems as before. I even re-installed Win98 and did the XP upgrade. No success.

Time for more desperate measures. I envoked one of the most powerful forces known to the PC enthusiast: FDISK.

A daring and dangerous maneuver, but I felt it was necessary. In no time I had deleted the primary DOS partition on my C: drive, reformatted it and again tried valiantly to re-install XP.

Again I met with failure.

This happened several times. I refused to give up, and so time and again I put that cursed XP CD in and time and again it failed, hung up, refused to operate or just plain blew raspberries at me. Then, it took its ultimate stab at me.

Somehow, through inattention or simply through the delirium brought on by so many failed attempts, I failed to notice as XP removed the partition on my secondary hard drive and reformatted it. I only noticed it as I watched the reformatting percentages begin to crawl across the screen and saw the reported size of the hard drive. It was wrong.

It was all wrong.

And before I knew it, my backup hard drive, years of work, articles, photos, web sites, my entire portfollio... gone.

The next try, though, brought me a full installation of XP with no errors.

Hurrah for me.

Now, with XP finally installed, all of my valuable data lost forever, and still no DSL service, I sat giddily in my own home office, joyfully selecting the perfect desktop background and sipping what had to be my millionth cup of coffee. It had been twenty-four hours since I had purchased XP on a friends recommendation, and it was finally working.

I'm not sure if I want to keep it or go back to Win 98.

J. Kevin Tumlinson is a writer and a schoolteacher living in Lake Jackson, TX. He doesn't feel very good about Windows right now.