A couple of days ago, whilst using that Windows Me on my other partition on my thinkpad, I accidentally told the computer to go into standby mode while the ethernet card was plugged in.

Windows Me + active NIC + standby mode = trouble.

When I boot into Windows, it tries to power up ... then down .. and up ... and down, etc. etc. Unless I reinstall (which I regularly have done ever since getting Windows Me), that partition is useless.

In short, Windows doesn't work here anymore.

Linux works like a swiss clock. Then I found this. If I only had one OS on my computer, my MSc thesis would be history.

Oh, and please try answering with how Linux saved your life, not Linux vs. Windows as that's really, really, really, really boring.

Bert

I use Linux installation cds as rescue disk. I've saved so many systems this way...

What I'm thinking about is installing all the linux boxes going to schools with a tiny weeny rescue partition used for emergency tasks such as getting files off the drive if everything goes wrong. Does anyone have experience of doing this for their systems? Is this a good idea for ghosted 'in the field' linux boxes?

Thanks

Bert