my Windoze 2000 installation notes

(image saved from this Apple postcards site)

A few days ago (November 2002) I accidentally installed an incorrect IDE driver in Windows 2000. The machine crashed instantly, and wouldn't boot anymore: INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE. Booted into Linux, where I found every Windows disk (including the NTFS volume that had Windows 2000) was perfectly readable.

My attempts to fix this: booting in Safe mode, "last known good configuration", from CD-ROM, Recovery console, FIXBOOT, disabling some services... nothing worked.

Booted back into Linux, copied the data I wanted to keep from the NTFS volume, and decided to re-install Windows 2000:

• initial setup: 10 minutes
• detecting devices: 5 minutes
• name and clock, networking: 2 minutes
• "components": 2 minutes
• "final tasks": 4 minutes, reboot (1)
• finding and installing a network driver for an Intel D815EEA motherboard: 30 minutes, then a KERNEL_TRAP error, crash, reboot (2)
• Nvidia display driver download and install, 5 minutes, reboot (3)
• crash (system froze), reboot (4)
• running "Windows Update", crash, reboot (5)
• trying again, crash, total 10 minutes, reboot (6)
• trying again, it worked (!), download and install of Service Pack 3, 30 minutes, reboot (7)
• download and install security updates, 7 minutes, crash after 8 out of 13 updates were downloaded, reboot (8)
• remaining security updates, 3 minutes, reboot (9)
• download and install DirectX, 4 minutes, reboot (10)
• sound driver, 1 minute
• ATA100 driver, 4 minutes

Total: TWO hours, and TEN reboots. Then you have an OS with Explorer, Minesweeper, and such. No other applications. After the initial install I removed the "quick launch" icon for Outlook ("sure you want to move it to the recycle bin?", NO I WANT TO DELETE IT, EMPTY RECYCLE BIN, "sure you want to remove this item?"). The icon reappeared sometime while installing the subsequent updates...

No I don't dislike Microsoft software. DOS 5.0 was actually ok.