I don't mean to rant about windows or anything, but I just have to vent a little frustration, and breathe a big sigh of relief today. About 2 hours before a large C++ project was due, I booted up my computer, hoping to upload the source code (which was done) to my website, and then just hop on down to the computer lab and print it out(nice and clean). Then, windows breaks. No error messages, no nothing, it just won't bring me to the login screen, and the hard drive stops spinning. It does this several times. So I think, maybe my hard drive is borked.

Nope, Linux starts up just fine.

At this point, I'm REALLY wishing that the class did not require Microsoft Visual Studio. Anyways, with the deadline drawing near, I am forced to reinstall windows. REINSTALL the operating system just to get one file. It just so happens this file is worth 30% of my grade...

Luckily, nothing went wrong after that, but I tell you, I have a new resolve to do as much of my stuff as possible in Linux from now on.(Admittedly, it would not have helped in this situation because, as I said, the class requires me to use Visual Studio)

I can only hope, nothing like this calamity ever befalls anyone else.

Probably this type of calamity happens more often than you think. I keep very stern backups of all of my data and the what-would-have-been close calls that I have had are too many to count.

You might want to consider putting your Windows under your Linux using Win4Lin. That is what I have done on one of my computers. Not only has my Windows there become far more solid due to the solid Linux file structure that is now beneath Windows instead of the ricketyness that Windows usually provides, but, if my Windows were to actually fail, I can still get to my Windows data using Linux.

Backups prevent this kind of thing. People cannot expect to use an OS and not have backups. I don't care if it's Linux, Windows, MacOS, or whever.

You should have backed stuff up to a second Hard Drive.

If it's worth 30% of your grade you should have backed it up to a second hard drive, an internet drive, and a CD or two....

People will eventually learn

i found that out the hard way

Or save all those types of files to another partitoin, preferably Fat32 so you can access them in Linux.

talk about windows failing me. im in a class that requires MS visual basic 6. well all of a sudden this weekend i went to print all the stuf I made and i see im not on the network (to use the printer), so I try all the tricks i know in MS to no avail. I go into linux, Im on our network. I just dont get it.

so I just copied the files to my FTP server folder and went to my dads printer to do printing. but its still annoying. (i didnt burn a CD because