How can people survive with Windows?

[Petermint]

New machine. Factory install of Windows. Booted about 5 times. Windows is broken.

No changes. No updates. No connection to a network. Just looking through the options to find the configuration and the supplied backup/recovery options.

The error message says I need the installation media for the repair. There is no install media. I looked for the instructions to create install media during one of the working boot sessions but the bit you use, well, did use in Windows 7, is missing or hidden.

Windows used to be reliable. NTFS was more reliable than Ext3. Under Windows 10, NTFS is fragile. Windows 10 is fragile. It might be a trick to make you buy a new copy of Windows every time you boot.

[cliffcoggin]

The solution is simple. Replace it with Linux Mint.

[AndyMH]

The solution is simple. Replace it with Linux Mint.

+1
But if you must, download a win10 iso, burn it to a stick and boot from it.

[Pierre]

New machine. Factory install of Windows. Booted about 5 times. Windows is broken.

if it's actually that New .. then you should Take It Back to the Store, where it was purchased.


anyway .. Why .. coz they usually Don't Know any better.


you'd be surprised .. well, actually, you'd probably Not be that surprised.
- - that is why your running an LinuxMint System - -

[Petermint]

I found another Windows 10 machine and created a recovery drive. I followed MS instructions for recovering. The recovery drive simply wiped everything and installed Windows 10. I had to go through all the bovine brown stuff again.

I am keeping Windows purely for an emergency as this machine is the backup for the only Windows 10 machine I support. I will install dual boot then default to booting a useful OS, CP/M.

MS do not tell you how big the recovery drive has to be until a long way into using a spare 8 GB USB stick. They then said no, it has to be 16 GB. Luckily I used 64 GB the next time as it actually used 32 GB.

[Second Round]

I recently "upgraded" my super-old laptop to a merely old one that was running Windows 10 (originally it came with Win 8 ). My plan was to set it to dual boot to Linux Mint, like I have on my desktop - that perceived valuable lifeline to Windows. I started with disabling secure boot and enabling USB boot. Well, before I knew it, I couldn't boot normally at all. But there was a rescue boot offered to me, luckily including USB, so I ended up booting to my Linux Mint installer. Windows was gone, as far as I could tell (or access), so I just installed Mint on the HDD ... the laptop is 100% Linux Mint - no lifeline to Windows.

And it's totally fine. Turns out I don't really need Windows, not even a little.

[ajgringo619]

I agree with @Pierre - take it back where you bought it. The "factory" install was more likely a cloned SSD from a (supposedly) stable build on the same basic hardware; at least that's what I did back in the day. I can still remember when getting an installation CD (or even floppies) was the norm; nobody does that anymore. I would give a complete reinstall a try first, though.

Can you explain what you mean by "NTFS is fragile"?

[Petermint]

NTFS fragile?
Ext3 used to have a problem restarting after an abnormal reboot. NTFS under NT did not have that problem, making NT a more reliable server for a while. Ext4 solved that problem in Linux. NT was destroyed by MS stupidity after they fired the main NT developer, the sort of stupidity that eventually produced Vista.

NTFS under Windows 10, and possibly 8, now has a problem where it can fail after an abnormal restart, reducing NTFS to the reliability of Ext3. There are some strange options in Windows 10 for formatting NTFS and at least one of those options destroys some of the advantages of NTFS.

The default install of NTFS on a Windows 7 laptop survived dual booting with no problems in any of the times I used it. The "same" configuration of Windows 10 creates problems where you have to boot back into Windows to fix NTFS problems. NTFS just fails®.

The problems with NTFS did not occur when I manually installed Windows 10 for dual boot. In the manual install, I formatted all the NTFS partitions without any of the options. I used and abused the dual boot for a year with a shared NTFS partition and never had a problem. Things like Libreoffice accessed the same files in both OSs. NTFS just worked.

[ajgringo619]

Interesting. I did the same thing (as in your last paragraph) and have never had any NTFS problems; in fact, my main VMware partition is NTFS (created in Mint) and it's rock-solid.

For me, I've had much better luck/stability with W10 over W7, especially with updates. As bad as W10 has been over the years, W7 would take 5x longer to update. Thankfully I rarely ever need Windows anymore.

[Petermint]

Windows 10 is now working after the reinstall from the recovery drive. I put the recovery drive in a safe just in case I need it. Before placing the windows recovery drive in the same place as my Linux backups, I wrapped the drive in garlic bulbs and put a silver cross on top. I was going to follow the instructions in Bram Stoker's documentation but I had no holy water.

From within Windows, I decreased the C:partition and created a small NTFS D: partition for possible sharing of data. I now have 400 GB of space on the 512 GB SSD for Linux Mint 20.1 Cinnamon.

400 GB should be enough for a Linux system partition.

[Moonstone Man]

... but I had no holy water.

The holy water isn't necessary. The acid from the garlic will already have reacted with the silver to create an electromagnetic charge that has now destroyed your data.

[Pierre]

if you split the 512Gb SSD into 50/50 partitioning,
then you would find that the LinuxMint System would occupy about 30% of the space of the Windows System.


also, splitting that SSD into three partition, would also work,
as you could share the third /data partition with both systems.

[Petermint]

Windows reports:
100 MB EFI system
65.94 GB NTFS system only 14.11 used.
48 GB NTFS shared and unused.
361 GB unused.
742 MB NTFS recovery 85 MB used.

When I ask Windows to shrink the system partition, it says 53 GB is used so I shrunk it again to 53 GB then reduced D: to 20 GB.

The Windows storage manager does not allow all the Gparted options. To move D:, I had to delete it and reallocate it.

Windows would not allocate the Ext4 partitions for me.

[Portreve]

I'm going to suggest you use a utility to make duplicates of your self-produced Windows 10 recovery flash drive. I've discovered that, at least with HP systems, the thing eats itself after the re-installation, rendering it useless.

In my particular case, I got HP to send me a factory HP flash drive, and it shows up as read-only. I've used it several times now.

[motoryzen]

I recently "upgraded" my super-old laptop to a merely old one that was running Windows 10 (originally it came with Win 8 ). My plan was to set it to dual boot to Linux Mint, like I have on my desktop - that perceived valuable lifeline to Windows. I started with disabling secure boot and enabling USB boot. Well, before I knew it, I couldn't boot normally at all. But there was a rescue boot offered to me, luckily including USB, so I ended up booting to my Linux Mint installer. Windows was gone, as far as I could tell (or access), so I just installed Mint on the HDD ... the laptop is 100% Linux Mint - no lifeline to Windows.

And it's totally fine. Turns out I don't really need Windows, not even a little.

Often you must disable Fast Boot to ensure the machine actually shuts down the Windows booting...deal completely. Otherwise weird crap can happen ( a windows update bricking Linux Grub is one example). Even then it's no guarantee. It's just not worth it to dual boot with windows and a Linux distro being inside the same storage drive. It's always safer to keep those worlds separate and just boot into one while the other is completely disconnected.

Happy to read you don't need windows anymore regardless. Welcome to a greener team that doesn't require bs like TPM or Secure boot just to work correctly or allow you to even boot into it or install it.

[Petermint]

make duplicates

I bought two USB sticks for that. Comparison. LM requires 2 GB. Windows 10 requires 34 GB.

After deleting the six copies of MS Office, the system use was down to 14 GB. There was one whole Office installed in each of six languages with each copy using ten times more disk space than LibreOffice. No wonder Windows machines now start with 512 GB SSDs instead of 128 GB.

Happy to read you don't need windows anymore

Windows 10 is purely to backup one machine used by a relative. Yeah, that old problem. I did replace some MS applications with free open applications. The owner runs projects preventing complete removal of M$.

[Termy]

Funnily enough, people surely say the same thing about us Linux users.

[Petermint]

people surely say the same thing about us Linux users

Handsome?
Intelligent?
Weird?

[Portreve]

people surely say the same thing about us Linux users

Handsome?
Intelligent?
Weird?

I'm told that all the time.

[Moem]

People can survive with almost anything, as long as they don't know that other options exist.