[Tfug] Microsoftware wars on my computer

[sitkaa at email.arizona.edu]

It looks like I am gonna be paying alot more attention to this board for awhile.




Two days ago I followed Microsoft's recommendation, and updated everything,
installed their newest, latest and greatest whatsits. Among them was MS Vista.

My recommendation for anyone thinking of upgrading is: DON'T!!! Vista works very
poorly, conveniently deleting competitive non-M$ program files (oops, it is a
beta, you know), and generally not working worth a flip. Whatever security
reasons there are to upgrade, I cannot imagine them being worth the problems
that program incurs.

Vista alters the hard disk's Master Boot Record, making it very hard to remove.
I had not the expertise to remove it myself, and couldn't figure out how to do
a rollback to XP. Nor did I have the patience to spend days, weeks trying to
figure it out. I went out and bought another (blank, unformatted) hard drive,
set it as the primary, and have been reloading most of my old programs back on.
It has been an incredible excuse to clean up the system, update the drivers,
etc. That was all day yesterday. Thank you, Microsoft.

At this point, I don't care what it takes. I am migrating to something, anything
else.




So I have two hard drives. The first is set up with XP and several years worth
of associated files and whatnots.

The second disk is gonna be blank, as soon as I figure out how to delete all the
Microsoft files that Microsoft is not allowing me to delete (I don't have enough
privaleges to remove them from my old hard drive - I hope reformatting it will
satisfy care of the need for privelges). The second drive is also formatted
with the newer Vista Master Boot Record, which apparently can be a nasty cur to
work with. I would like to use this disk for linux programs.

So I downloaded and wrote an ISO of Ubuntu (it looks like a good place for noobe
to start), just to check it out, see if I can run the program. Well it turns
out, I can't. When I reboot to this disk, my monitor comes up with an error
that says, in effect, it can't read the video signal. I suppose it could be the
video card or the monitor.




Too sum:

Is the Vista Master Boot Record gonna be problem in converting the second disk
to Linux?

Can I simply reformat the second disk with GRUB or LILO, or do I do that with
Ubuntu, or does the Ubuntu program have the GRUB or LILO built in?

How can I overcome the video signal problem?




System = Dell Dimension 9100
CPU = Dual core 2.8
RAM = 1.5 gig PC4200
Hardrive controller = SATA
C: = SATA II 160 gig (the new one)
F: = SATA 80 gig
Monitor = Dell 1905FP
Video Card = Radeon X300 SE 128MB Hypermemory




Thanks, in advance for your help.
Michael