...to Windows 8. On Monday morning, it let me down for the third and final time. I went to boot and got the Automatic Repair message, then a restart, and then the same message again. After the seventh or eighth cycle I realized it was a hopeless cause and did a hard shutdown. So I went into Recovery and found the Command Prompt, entered "bootrec /fixboot", and waited for it to finish. Tried another reboot with the same result as above. So back into Recovery I went with the intention to re-install, making it the third time in just over four months. And then there came a moment when I stopped and asked myself, "What the heck (not exactly the word I used) do you think you're doing? Asking for more of the same?". It did not take long to make my decision. I already had a two USB sticks made up, one with Partition Wizard, the other with openSUSE 12.3. A little over an hour later I had a new operating system.
This has been in the making for quite some time. I've grown tired of dealing with one problem after another, some minor, and others catastrophic. I had actually been researching how to install a dual boot system with Windows 8, which is complicated by UEFI and Secure Boot. And I spent some time on Sunday planning my new partitioning scheme. Then I realized that any future problems with Windows 8 would mean re-installing Windows, re-partitioning, then re-installing the second system, meaning twice the work. So I ditched that idea. I do have my Windows 8 recovery on a USB stick if I ever want to go back, but I think I'm thinking of giving openSUSE a fair chance, at least a couple of months or so.
This is not a goodbye to everyone on the forum. There are some people I really like here, along their willingness to help others, and their sense of camaraderie. I'll be popping in from time to time to see how everyone is doing, but just a little less frequently than before. So until the next time, take care everyone.
I've never used OpenSuse but I guess it's almost akin to any of the other Linux variants.
I've never been game enough to ditch Windows completely, I really don't want to shoot myself in the foot just to "take that Bill Gates", but I'd be interested to hear how you get on with the Linux equivalents needed to get your work done.
My data recovery rig, solely running Ubuntu, has highlighted that, for me, the big stopper is Excel, and my heavy use of it's formulas which just aren't as good with any of the clones I've tried.
Personally, I find Win8 just fine, it's no bigger a jump to it than coming from any of the previous OS's. (which Windows OS has not had it's little idiosyncrasies!)
I'm looking forward to 8.1 and hopefully seeing the platform become that much better again - he says with fingers crossed.
Depending upon how long you've had that computer I'd look into the warranty on it, and if it's still in the warranty period perhaps get it RMA'd and looked at by the manufacturer.
Don't go away, Derek, keep posting how it goes with Linux. I admire your courage...never been brave enough to abandon windows yet, but it won't be as long as it has been, I think.
How about doing some test on Windows 8.1 first? Maybe the patch will solve some obscure faults. I am keeping w7 for now. I think I will pass on w8 as I did with Vista. (it seems a common pattern for MS Operatng Systems). And I am not saying w8 is bad at all (nothing to do with the Vista fiasco), but it isn't appealling to me.
Another thought is trying to reinstall w8 without UEFI/secure boot. Can it be done? Who needs GUID partitions when your partitions are smaller than 2TB?