This Bloody, Bloody Foot

All I can do is look down at the blood welling from multiple holes and ask, "Why do I keep shooting myself in the foot? Am I really going to learn this time?"

This time...

I always partition my hard drive, it not only makes more efficient use of disk space, but it's part of my filing system, so I decided to give myself a generous C:\ partition for my system and associated file; 100 Gig should do. Then D:\Linux, E:\LinuxScratch, F:\Programs, G:\GeekStuff, H:\Temp.

Well, I set up the C:\System partition and as soon as I'd formatted it, Windows started installing itself. But, "I can deal with this, I have Partition Magic," so I let it go ahead with the install.

After installing Windows and the necessary drivers (after finally finding the CD's), I planned to download all the updates for Windows XP. Once that interminable process was over, I'd kill my Internet connection for safety's sake, install my actual programs and, only after all that was complete, install that major pain in the derriere, Norton Antivirus.

I have one of those love/hate relationships with Norton. I imagine most people who use it do. You've really got to protect your computer from the evils lurking on the Web, but, Dang!, performance sure takes a heavy hit when Norton's installed.

Since I'm still don't know why my hard drive crashed, I want to make sure that I have a prophylactic (Norton) on before I slave it to the new drive and go exploring.

Found the necessary drivers -- all neatly together in a CD rack. Nice, finding one meant finding them all. Installed my modem and network card then got on line. Went to Microsoft, started the upgrade downloads only to get the message, "Insufficient Disk Space"!!!

Huh?

Turned out I'd missed my decimal point and formatted 10 Gig instead of 100.

Evil Language!

Of course, you know which disk I can't find now... Partition Magic.

Me and Murphy. Joined at the hip and shooting at my foot.