Bloody hell, XP? The world moved down to Vista, up to W7, down to W8, noodled around for W8.1, and then on up to W7 years ago.

Get with the times daddy-o. Currently I'm nursing a boner over W10.

My pc still has agp, ide and a floppy drive, all in use. I can' t use half the connectors on the new psu. It's like a vintage car.

And they'll all work with Windows 7.

I don't have Windows 7.

Speak to Jim.

Bull /shit/ you still use the floppy drive. Whatever response you come back with I'm refusing to believe it.

Mainly for a backup mbr pointing to my bootloader. I touch it so rarely I have to dive into the rubbish tip that is my real desktop to find the boot floppy I made last September.

I probably will be getting a legit copy sometime in the next 3-6 months, along with new components. At least I can cross a psu and hdd off the bottom line when it comes to that.

Just get Win 10 in that case. But seriously, stop using XP. Windows 7 is 6 years old already.

I don't believe you. Not least because there are about a billion better ways to fix a fucked mbr than using a floppy which, by the time you need it again, is invariably de magnetised and useless.

OK, well you've probably had to to do this fewer times than me, and you won't ever need to do it again anyway.*

Trust me, it's the easiest way to hit a bootloader, boot into linux and restore the mbr after xp nuked it... if your mb is not usb-bootable, like mine.

Saves faffing around with tedious slow boot from a live disk, and chroots.

It's true the boot floppy could die in the meantime, but it's a doddle to recreate (best to test it first though).


*unless you need to resq gran's old pc. Oh wait, gran's vey unlikely to have a dual boot with linux. Never mind.
 

On a proper computer I have never let myself do a single drive dual boot. I didn't trust any OS to live happily with another. I always used a totally separate drive and picked the drive to boot from at POST.

OK.

My arse is way older than six years, and it still works fine.

I bet it's had its moments though.

I somehow doubt it.

A diet of unspecified pizza and diet coke can't be great for it.

Reinstall windows.

(fail)

GPWM