Luckily my parents laptop came with a windows xp pro cd and a valid product key. So, after backing up important files using ubuntu, I proceeded to install windows. I had forgotten how annoying installing windows can be.
After having seen ubuntu the experience is, well, extremely user unfriendly and extremely likely to end in disaster unless you know what to do. For the record, the ubuntu live dvd recognized all hardware out of the box without any intervention. Impressive. The easy, but tedious, part is putting the windows cd in the tray. Then the installer gives you a few seconds to trigger it by hitting enter. Then you are confronted with a slowly loading text only wizard where you will have to do something very risky: removing a partition and creating a new one. The provided tool for this is outdated by the standards set by linux distributions. The point of this step is to start with a clean disk, so getting this right is important. 99% of the user population would at this point likely make the wrong choice and either end up installing a very old xp over their existing installation or installing it in some weird location on a harddrive that is still full of spyware. OK, been there done that so, clickety and nice clean drive.
Then it starts copying. It reboots. More copying and then some questions about where I am. More copying. Product key. More copying. Modem & Network settings. This fails but I end up being online anyway (network cable plugged in so how hard can it be)? Another reboot. Then during the first boot a wizard with an annoyingly loud shitty music in the background. At this point my laptop’s volume buttons are not yet operational (have to be logged in?). Activation and finally done. It takes about one and a half hours and it requires constant fiddling with wizards so you can’t just leave it alone to do its thing. Oh wait. We’ve just started. This is an old windows cd, I do not yet have the billion security updates that are the whole point of this operation and that do not install themselves without manual intervention. OK, two hours later I’m patched all the way up to two years ago (sp2). Now the auto update finally kicks in. Another hour, three reboots and 50+ security updates (not kidding) later it is finally over, I think.
Oh wait. Much of the hardware is actually not working correctly. Stuff like my usb ports, pc card slot, video graphics chip are all not working correctly. Nor is my wireless card (smc pcmcia card, plugging it in hangs the system). And damn this internet explorer default page is annoying. And thanks for showing me this unavoidable welcome to windows promo again (you have to watch it to get rid of the annoying traybar icon). And no thanks for the hotmail msn thingy. Turns out the compaq support site has a nice list of stuff you could install. The problem with this site is twofold: there are multiple things to choose from without any clear guidance on what to install and what not to install. Secondly, all downloads (and there are a lot) are conveniently named sp4325345345.exe where the number is the only thing that varies. The idiot who invented that naming scheme should be taken out and shot. Anyway, I installed half a dozen of their driver packs and everything seems to work now. At least several of the downloads there are crucial to the correct operation of the laptop.
No way my parents could have done all of this on their own. The sad truth with windows is that if it is not configured correctly out of the box, it is really difficult to get everything working correctly. My mother was asking me this weekend if she could do it herself or go to the shop to have somebody do it. If only that were possible :-). In terms of labour cost, the price is a nice low end PC just waiting for all of the above to complete. Of course there is plenty of opportunity for mistakes so realistically it is probably cheaper to just go to dell and buy new hardware & software.