I knew that extra phone listing might be handy someday. Fussing with a download that wouldn't md5sum and needing it very badly, I was only too happy for the break when the phone rang and I picked it up, saying "Mandrakesoft".
"Errr, I have a REAL problem. " "Is it with one of our systems?" "No," he replied, "but I'll buy the most expensive boxed set if your system can help me." In the course of a few minutes I learned that this fellow hadf a Dell Dimension P-II 400 with STB Velocity card and Turtle Beach Montego II Sound card, and he had been running Win98 successfully. He had a Microsoft-badged optical mouse and Microsoft-badged USB keyboard. When WinXP came out, his father was the first person in line at CompUSA to buy it at 12:01 am October 25th. So he installed the update. Keyboard and mouse promptly stopped working. His plan was to install linux, copy his vital data over to it, then format the winpartition and reinstall XP cleanly as Microsoft Support (Two hours on hold long distance to Redmond ) assured him if he did that that his keyboard and mouse would work. I told him where to pick up the download edition of 8.1 and he took them. An hour later I had a call, "It won't resize Windows small enough." By now it was 7 pm. I went to his computer and brough along a spare 10G disk. I added it temporarily on the spare connector and let him install ML 8.1 to the second disk, making sure he chose GRUB to boot with. Everything worked, and his cable modem connected out of the box--only the advisory popped up to visit sourceforge about the sound card. Transferring his 2.2G of files was a snap, then diskdrake was called to clean up the messy hda, partitioning 3/4 of it for windows and leaving the rest for his "rescue system". WinXP balked and insisted on seeing the win98 CD, then it installed, taking out the boot record entry for linux (but we had a boot disk). The mouse and keyboard worked fine until the final reboot then communication ceased. Now out with the win98 disk but it refuses to install over XP. Back to Linux and diskdrake from a terminal su'ed too root to wipe clean again. Win98 now loads after an old installer trick of copying the win98 directory to the hard drive and installing from there. And linux restores the 2.2 G of files it had saved. Now the extra Hdd is removed and win98 is running using mouse and keyboard. Back to CompUSA goes the XP even though one mouse worked long enough to send Redmond the info for the activation Code. Into CompUSA is placed an Order for ProSuite. He already has the Aureal drivers from sourceforge. I know sometimes our system has trouble with a wheelmouse, and a lot of trouble if someone sets the wrong mouse type (3-button emulation kills wheelmice), but this is something I don't think we have ever done. Certified Hardware not running on a new system is a serious flaw, and even a billion dollar advertising campaiggn and midnight starting sales will not correct that sort of flaw. Civileme
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