Upgrade woes

I’ve had some issues with my livingroom PC that is our internet router, DVD player and backup for laptops. The Windows 2000 installation had gone somewhat crazy and I couldn’t install anything that came with InstallShield. The InstallShield repair instructions didn’t help, as the repair program should have been installed with InstallShield…

I decided to install Windows XP instead of repairing the current installation. This was a mistake, as I soon found out.

The box has two hard disks, one partitioned to three partitions: Windows 2000 (C:, 25 GB), DVD burner temp (E:, 10 GB) and data (D:, 85 GB). The other disk is one big partition (G:, 250 GB).

The installation went along the following lines:

1. Saturday evening: Install Windows XP from Windows 2000 to E: for testing that Windows XP can found all the hardware. The installation went haywired as it ended up into wrong directory: e:tempxp instead of e:windows.
2. The installation broke W2K that wouldn’t start anymore.
3. Go to bed, cursing.
4. Sunday morning: Install PartitionMagic to XP in order to repartition the first disk. Copy contents of D: to G: as safety precaution. Remove one big folder.
5. Repaired W2K with CD. This took three reboots, but finally W2K booted.
6. Found out that G: is now broken. chkdsk was not able to continue. Cancelled it, booted again. Run chkdsk again from Command Promp, saw it fail again. The disk didn’t have any of the files from D:
7. Found out that XP installation got broken.
8. Undeleted the big folder from D:. Carried LaCIE Big Disk, hooked it up and sucked all data from D: and some minor parts of C: This took two hours.
9. Went to have a dinner with Sanna’s aunt.
10. Sunday evening: Unplugged the LaCIE disk, checked its contents with laptop and put it to rest.
11. Installed Windows XP again. The installation hung after first reboot, as G: was broken. XP was not able to fix.
12. Opened the computer and physically removed G:
13. Installed Windows XP again. This time it went through. Booted up and installed PartitionMagic. Reorganised disks to have free space at the beginning of the disk. This took 1,5 hours.
14. Windows XP booted up, but found out that it was installed to E:. Not all programs work with this configuration. Fix this with drive mapping feature of PartitionMagic.
15. Tried to boot, all Windows were broken.
16. Installed Windows XP again. Failed. Installed Windows XP again. Succeeded.
17. Booted up Windows XP and found out that it was now installed to D:. Installed PartitionMagic, toggled C: off.
18. Try to install Windows XP. C: was found with W2K with it.
19. Turned computer off. Went to bed grumbling and cursing. Cuddled into Sanna’s arms.
20. Decided to buy a new disk for Windows XP.

How something can be so difficult. I have already wasted more than one day fighting with a simple task. The major problem is now that Windowses do not survice remapping of C: and the C: disk has to be exactly same for every Windows. Why this can’t be an alias for the system disk?

I just checked the prices of the disks. It’s easiest to get one of those, install the OS into it and then plug old disks and try to get them working. I’ll have a busy evening.