So somehow apparently my boot.ini file got corrupted so I put my XP cd so it could create a new one and fix any damage and even though I told it to repair it decided that to format and delete my partition again. Gotta love that.

Oh well, I wanted to do a format soon and at least all my files were backed up.

Well that's good that you didn't lose your stuff. That would blow.

A similar problem is happening to me but I haven't resolved it yet. I want to reformat my harddrive for a number of reasons, but apparently my XP security is compromised somehow so I get the infamous STOP 0x000021a error when I try to system recover. I wish I'd created some recovery disks...I had to tell HP to send me some. I don't know when I'll get 'em.

Those damn recovery disks piss me off. I installed Linux on my HP computer and my recovery disks won't recover because of it. I have no freaking idea what the problem is. The recovery disks have no defects but the hard drive rejects them. It gives me a non-system disk error when I boot with them.

My HP laptop included a standard Windows XP install disk, and that's what it should have been in the first place. Damn you HP recovery!

I still run Linux on my HP desktop, and I am accepting/liking it because I can run a server on it for any purpose.

Have you guys tried making a boot disk?

you could always head the shifty way and "acquire" a copy elseware... I decided to boot up vista last time my xp screwed up... its worked fine for me (IMG:https://rpgcrisis.net/forums/style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) although i did have a few probs installing it... my comp wouldn't let me boot it from startup so i had to disable my CD rom drive...

I actually reformat my pc's every couple years cause Windows actually degrades over time. But, if your boot.ini file is corrupt, that can be a *****. Plus, Windows Repair hardly ever works like it should. I implore everyone to always back up data as much as possible, you just never know when things can go south.

Windows have a lot of crappy issues. I didn't have much problems with Linux, though it isn't as user-friendly to use as Windows. So I'd stick with Windows. My Linux machine is responsible for file storage and being a web server for my upcoming site. Using a completely different OS is exciting.

one of my friends switchedbto Linux, but swapped right back into vista within the week.

I don't know what Vista is like too much. I heard it's full of bugs and glitches and can be really slow. I will get it with my quad-core PC though.

My father's computer has Vista but I didn't use it too much.

I'm dual booting Vista but I much much much prefer XP. The only reason I ever use Vista is for DX10 and to mess around with voice recognition. Freaking awesome technology.

I find it funny that everyone is so anti-vista at the moment. Anyone remember what it was like when XP was released? People were complaining saying the EXACT same things that are being said about Vista right now, now XP is the standard. I'd say within 2 years Vista will be the standard and everyone will have moved on to complaining about the recently released WinFS and how it sucks.

FYI, WinFS was supposed to be the new updated file system that was going to be used in "Longhorn", for more information click the link below.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinFS

True, but remember that in 2 years a lot of the bugs that vista has now will have been fixed.

A good portion of them have been with SP1 which is available for download though its only in RC stages.