Stupid !$!@#$ Windows

[mdlbear]

Stupid goddamn Windows! For some reason, Windows on the Younger Daughter's machine wasn't responding to the keyboard. Mouse worked fine, and the keyboard worked for the bootloader and Windows login, so it's not hardware. Anything I could think of to do to fix it would, of course, involve typing in a URL to find software. Nuke and pave. Takes roughly half an hour to load the install image from three CDs, and probably another two hours to install a minimally useful set of programs (Firefox, OOo, network config for the printers). Foo.

Comments

[mdlbear]

Unfortunately, what I really want is Windows running as a guest OS under Linux or under an open source hypervisor; this is a configuration that Connectix used to support, but I'm pretty sure that it doesn't work under Microsoft's version. Correct me if I'm wrong.

[elimloth.livejournal.com]

what I really want is Windows running as a guest OS under Linux or under an open source hypervisor; this is a configuration that Connectix used to support

Oh yes, it was a pain trying to get the myriad distros and their myriad tweaked up kernels to continue working. This was not a stable product.

Have you looked at xen? That is an open source paravirtulization hypervisor that supports both linux guests (albiet heavily modified). When the hardware virtualization capable machines become available, xen will be able to run unmodified Windows atop it.

[mdlbear]

I know about Xen -- trouble is it won't run Windows on my hardware, and I'm unlikely to upgrade any of my machines to virtualization-capable CPUs for several years. So I have a bunch of cheap dual-boot machines ($250 at Fry's) and occasionally have to reboot one. Doesn't affect me much -- the only Windows program I use on a regular basis is TaxCut.