Update: Dual Booting Problem Resolved
On my PC I dual boot with Ubuntu Linux and Windows XP, but last week my Windows setup crashed. While in Windows I got an error saying some files were corrupted and could not be read which advised me to run chkdsk (checkdisk is a Windows disk checking utility). That was the last time I was able to log into Windows since. All attempts so far have ended up in the blue screen of death even using the Windows XP installation CD. I was able to run chkdsk using the recovery console but no errors were found. Fortunately my linux partition was unaffected.
So now I am solely running Ubuntu, which is my preferred operating system anyway, and I haven’t got around to fixing my Windows setup yet. The main reason for this is that to fix the Windows problem I may have to mess with the computer’s master boot record and it is very possible that this could end up affecting the currently working Ubuntu partition also. Therefore, I may have to reinstall two operating systems and restore all backed up data, which is a good bit of downtime. I’ve decided that what I will do instead is wait till next month when Ubuntu 8.04 is due to come out and tackle the problem then – killing two birds with one stone.
Most of the tools I use for website and graphic design are either open source or I am familiar with open source alternatives to them that work on any platform. The notable exception is Adobe Flash. Support for the CMYK colour model like in Adobe Photoshop is also lacking but that is mainly used for jobs being professionally printed and not for images for the web.
I have not completely ruled out the possibility that Windows crashed because of a hardware problem with my hard drive, however all diagnostics including but not limited to chkdsk found no problems, so I’ll have to keep monitoring the situation.
Last Updated on September 4, 2015 by Nathan Vidal