So I tried installing XP on my laptop computer by buying an extra harddrive for it so I wouldn’t destroy the Vista setup that came with my laptop.

That failed because the laptop is SATA and the XP installation program doesn’t recognize that (and I couldn’t come up with a SATA driver for my laptop to install at the beginning of the XP installation process.) Long story short, I tried installing an XP installation on that laptop harddrive on my desktop computer (the SATA for the laptop and desktop have the same plugs, still didn’t work), and I needed to partition the laptop harddrive. So I double and even triple checked to make certain I was gonna partition the correct drive, and it decided to destroy my partitions and boot sectors on 2 of the drives on my desktop before it got to my laptop drive. I was franticly trying to CTRL/ALT/DEL when I immediately noticed it, probabably should’ve powered off my desktop with my power strip, but didn’t have time enough to think of that. So I destroyed 2 (out of 3) of my operating systems on my desktop, and made invisible the other partitions on those 2 drives. So I spent the past week and a half recovering as much as possible.

Good news, the only things lost weren’t critical data. And in “The Process” I discovered how to turn off the most irritating thing about Windows Vista. The thing where it interrupts you asking for approval whenever you want to do something like open the Device Manager.

Here’s what you do: Open your Control Panel, open User Accounts and turn off User Account Control.

Happy Vistaing (and Happy Turkey Day!!!!)