Right, the time well and truly has come for me to figure out how to synch my iPod with Ubuntu (and yeah, I have links and stuff, I know, I know) because (a) I am not really up for installing a dual boot of Windows and Ubuntu on my netbook, and (b) Windows just had one of those regular little spectacular implosions on my “desktop” machine, which is a dual boot. (The desktop machine is in fact a laptop, but it lives on and stays on my desk.)
The recovery process? Ain’t workin’ for me. No at all, at all. Stinker. Not sure why, it just keeps crashing suddenly, and when I try to boot from my Windows partition, it says it wants me to recopy hal.dll from the startup disk. Except that of course the disk is some kind of special multi-disk Windows XP system so it isn’t doing the recovery properly.
I don’t think I had much data on the Windows installation, so I suppose I could recopy it, but there are probably a few files I’d prefer not to lose and which I didn’t back up.
I’m just blown away by the difficulty involved in fixing this little problem. Considering how bloated XP is, you’d think it would be a little more, you know, able to handle this sort of thing. Redundancies, or something. But it’s screwy. The only way I can see this getting sorted is by me going making a bootable Windows installation on a USB drive and then copying whatever data I can, or else by taking it in to a techie at the HP repair shop in Yongsan. And I don’t really want to waste my time on either.
Maybe I can get the damned drive to mount vfrom inside Ubuntu, but it’s refusing. (Though I did set it up to mount NTFS drives, and it’s weird that it’s refusing.) Anyway, it’s at times like these that I’m grateful for the fact that I primarily rely on Linux, not Windows, to get stuff done.
Update: Please oh please tell me it wasn’t because I left a friggin’ memory card from my camera in the slot. Please, tell me it’s not that. Because that would be retarded. SO retarded!
Gonna try get a backup from inside Ubuntu before rebooting in Windows. Gah, I didn’t need this today…