or I could have finished watching The 3rd Man ...

By basd on Sep 16, 2010 | In -arghhh!!

So, having gotten my Virtualbox WindowsXP running just fine, I was testing Netflix performance on my zd7000. Well, it wasn't quite what I was hoping for, as the video wasn't quite fast enough. I wasn't certain whether this is the zd7000 (which is fairly elderly as computers go) or my broadband feed. So, I decided to pause the playback and revisit the movie on my Gateway. (Being a netbook, this might not be what you would consider a valid benchmark, but anyway.) When suddenly ...

...

Well, let's say, things didn't go very well. The Gateway Lt3103u is one of my Jolicloud installs, and for starters let me say that there isn't anything actually on this computer as I have been deciding what to do with it since it recovered from thermal disaster.

So ... I needed to login to Vista. But, Jolicloud is the default -- and the Jolicloud installer had given me two Windows startup options. Which to choose?

I chose the wrong one.

That's when things went terribly awry. Because the partition I elected to use was the recovery partition.

I carefully selected "exit" so I could get out of there and reboot. But, it was apparently already "too late." Upon reboot I received the lonely word(s): "Error 22." No amount of rebooting would correct this, so it was fairly obvious the mbr had borked.

What to do? I am presently not in the location where my external CD drive and my copy of SuperGrub reside.

I had two flash drive linux installs -- OpSu 11.3 and Jolicloud. So, I picked wrong.

I picked OpSu 11.3, since that is the linux I am more familiar with and it has a lot more tools in the default install. Of course, I needed some info on how to fix the borked Grub. I found some not so good advice on the web, but finally landed on this link. Repair was actually pretty easy after a few stupid mistakes I will not bother to mention here. Suffice it to say that I do not follow directions all that well.

That sort of fixed everything. And the odd part of "sort of" is that Jolicloud had disappeared. The grub repair linked my windows and my OpSu 11.3. And some "other Linux" that turned out to be the flash drive copy of OpSu 11.3. But no Jolicloud. (And somewhat disappointingly, no Windows rescue partition.)

Going into OpSu 11.3 on the hard drive, I opened the partitioner and discovered an oddity. Where Jolicloud OUGHT TO BE was a 42 gb hole in the partition table. What? Where'd it go?

So, then I got out the Jolicloud flash drive version and fired up the installer. One would hope that it would offer a repair option -- well actually, I had hoped the OpSu 11.3 Live USB would offer the repair option, but it didn't either. So, no repair and no "rediscovery" of the Jolicloud partition. I proceeded to (re)-install Jolicloud to the now empty portion of the hard drive.

That worked, although Jolicloud is now busily downloading 32 updates and the 30 programs I have installed on my collective Jolicloud computers.

I hope I am not chasing my tail -- the Jolicloud installer once again provided two Windows options. I still do not know which is which -- what happens when I accidentally log into the Windows/Gateway repair partition again?

Yeesh.

We Make Mistakes So You Don't Have To.

(You're welcome.)

PS -- it's late, I still haven't finished watching The 3rd Man, but I admit I do know what happens ...