Max Glenister

so, i’ve just reinstalled windows xp, and did a complete format of my hard drive..

it’s at time like this im glad i bought my creative zen xtra 30gb mp3 player, the mp3 player is so cool..

plays mp3/wma/wav and can hold any file, so it was no problem to put some music on there to listen to, while i was installing, and put all of my files that i wanted to backup, on there, so i could completely wipe/reinstall windows.

i was using suse linux 9.1 for a while this week, on and off, dual boot with xp, last time i used it, i considered it the most depressing flavour of linux.. that i’ve used (so its competition is redhat/mandrake/fedora .. yeah, what?) i mean, it was a pain getting my head around masquerading, or in windows terms “sharing” my internet connection, through this pc.. but this time, i managed to get it to work.

so i had suse up and running nicely, upgraded to kde3.3 (gnome zealots, shh.) and had got it looking how i wanted (<3 plastic style) and then i was faced with trying to overcome the only thing that i hate about suse9.1..

see, for some reason, if i’m running “multihead” or dual-monitor, in suse9.1, then my graphics card has no 3d support.. this is because suse9.1 ships with no drivers supporting it, and hell, infact there aren’t any out there, even from nvidia.. last ones made were for suse8.1 .. but i decided “hey, i could SEE if i can MAKE it work” and i did, restarted X, and the screen was a no-go, no picture, hell, the keyboard didnt even respond to caps/num/scroll lock .. so i rebooted into windows xp, where i stayed until this morning, when i was messing around with windows..

now for a long time, ive been a fan of customizing windows xp, ive had it look like osx, ive had it look like “bluecurve”- the linux theme, and as it stood.. it was in a state of not-customized.. all bar a visual style, and some icons.

so im there “re-MACcing” it, as i like to call it, and was styling it like OSX, as the term would imply.. and it comes to customizing firefox.. i’ve done this so many times, and infact it wasn’t this that was the problem.

as i was messing with firefox, replacing files, installing add-ons, i decided to use the evi- er.. internet explorer to view a readme.html that came along with the “skin” for firefox, so i open it in IE, and then IE made a load of clicky noises, closed all open applications, killed explorer, installed some software, then rebooted the pc.. when windows started up again i find that it has been pumped full of ad/spy ware and it painful to even use.

so i backed all of my files up onto my mp3 player, and reinstalled windows, as i started this post saying.. and here i am now.