Windows XP pro upgrade: ridiculously horrible

I had similar trouble with Linux way back in the day. It was September or October of 2000. I had a nice little box (syphon) and it was working fine. However, Red Hat 6.2 was out, and I thought I'd go ahead and make the jump. Afterall, I had successfully upgraded a 5.0 to 5.1, then 5.2, then 6.0, then 6.1. I was happy with Red Hat's upgrade process, which I assumed just did the equivalent of

rpm -Uvh *

and that was it.

Boy, was I wrong.

I installed and, sure enough, the installer finished. I was psyched. "Remove CD-ROM from drive and reboot." Wow. So I did.

You know how it does those lovely little [ OK ] or [FAILED] when it boots? Well, about <b>half</b> came up with [FAILED]. Shit.

No problem, right? I'll just fix 'em. Just let me get online here...

startx

After spewing some garbage to the terminal, it terminated. Shit. X is fucked too. I re-ran Xconfigurator. Same thing.

Uh.....

Okay. Well I'll just use lynx, browse the web and get the info to fix these problems <b>that</b> way, then go ahead and do it. I'll be up and running in an hour.

lynx http://www.google.com

Huh, not working?

ifconfig shows... loopback. That's all.

<b>SHIT!</b>

insmoding the module didn't work. Nothing did. The new kernel module it installed was broken.

Well, I weighed my options - I could restore the system to its old state by carefully working with everything on the system, massaging it just the right way to make it work - or I could rebuild. Well, with all my programs and shit installed, my choice was pretty much made for me - I'm not throwing away years of configuration just for a fuckin' Red Hat Upgrade.

I hand-downgraded all the necessary packages. I got the ethernet working, downloaded the latest kernel (2.2.16 I think it was, though I could be wrong), installed that, made sure ethernet still worked, and then spent another 4-6 hours (honestly, I lost track of time that night) getting everything working properly. I swore from then on, "I will hand-upgrade everything in this system." And that's what I've done.

Unfortunately, you can't really do that with windows the same way you can with UNIX. But you shouldn't be using Windows anyway. Buy a Mac. They just <b>work</b>.