Quoting:

---
I found the hard way that you are right. I've lost hours just to find
out that the computer is still unusable.
I'm wiping the disk and installing Ubuntu from scratch. I'll have to
train my customer to use Ubuntu, but at least the computer will be
working :)
---

IF the system has enough horsepower (in my view at least a P4/1.5 CPU
and a gig or more memory) a WinXP virtual machine is always an option.

A lot of us have Win-specific apps we can't walk away from.  In my
case it's the ability to take apart Diebold election databases in
MS-Access.  I have the lowest-grade dual-core Intel CPU available, the
"Pentium dual-core" in a $500 budget laptop (eight months ago) with
2gig RAM and VirtualBox/XP under Linux works great.

This recipe uses Linux to surround and protect with WinXP setup, with
Linux acting as a super firewall from hell.  And if the WinXP image
gets screwed up, no problem, assuming you do backups at all the entire
Windows image is just a single file in the Linux home directory.
Restore that file and you're back in business.

If you use the "full tilt" VirtualBox downloaded off their site (as
opposed to the "open source edition" from the Ubuntu repositories, you
get USB pass-through and directory sharing between the Linux host OS
and the Windows guest.

USB pass-through means you can take a USB device like a printer, even
one that Linux totally chokes on like a Lexmark, and pass that port
through to Windows and run it in Windows with a Windows driver.  Way
cool.

Directory sharing means that in the Virtualbox controller/setup app in
Linux, you assign Linux directories to be shared with the Windows
guest.  From Windows, you do "network drive letters" up into the Linux
filespace.  That lets you keep all your data in Linux formats,
accessible to both OSes...and if Windows breaks forcing you to restore
it from backups, no data is lost!

It's impossible to overstate how cool this is, and how it radically
helps users transfer from Windows to Linux.

Jim
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