**Sigh**.

My development box ate itself. More specifically, the OS ate itself.

So, I backed up all my files and reformatted.

And alas, I have no Windows disc. My XP pro CD has a nice gash from the center hole halfway to the edge. So now I must use my brothers computer until I can get a copy of XP, and his room smells like ass and stale semen. How am I supposed to develop a Battle.net bot in the aroma of sweaty ass?

How serious is the gash? In the old days of my cracked up discs, I'd grab some toothpaste, smudge a bit over the crack, wipe the excess off, and usually it sealed it enough for the lazer eye to not lock up when it hit that empty space.

Linux!

If you're a VB developer you could try Gambas.

Is Gambas and OS?

It looks like a VB-style interpreter for Linux.  Try reading the site :-P

If you need an image of an XP cd to download, let me know privately. 

The gash is visible on the label on the other side of the disk.

I am not a VB developer.

I [legally]obtained[/legally] a XP Pro disk.

My box is now up and running.

I have wanted to put some sort of *nix on my machine, and I am currently downloading Debian.

But unfortunatly, the download was at 89% and that was one of the things I neglected to back up. Now I am back to zero.

Even better is the network. I can ping the other computers on my network, but when I try to browse the network I get the error "Network does not exist or is not started". This box connects to the internet, and the other ones connect thru it. The other boxes can access the internet and browse this computers shared resources.

Slackware owns debian! www.slackware.com/torrents :)

I fixed the "Network does not exist or is no started" deal, and now all 6 computers of my network (including 3 virtual ones) cannot see any computers but themselves on the network, which before all could see all. :( But they can still access the internet via this machine.

[quote author=Yegg link=topic=10256.msg96235#msg96235 date=1106438129]
This is off-topic, but if I installed Linux onto my PC, would I have to get rid of my Windows XP Pro or would I be able to select which OS to us on start up?
[/quote]

I believe you can, but I am not sure. If you can't I will have to bash someone's head in.

Yes, you can choose. Just make sure you install Linux second. The Windows installation process will automatically configure the boot loader to do nothing but load Windows automatically, whereas the Linux install can set up a utility to allow you to choose.

[quote author=Zakath link=topic=10256.msg96428#msg96428 date=1106579461]
Yes, you can choose. Just make sure you install Linux second. The Windows installation process will automatically configure the boot loader to do nothing but load Windows automatically, whereas the Linux install can set up a utility to allow you to choose.
[/quote]

This is true.  If you DO install Windows second, most Linuxes provide a way to boot into your os (on Slackware, if you boot off a cd, it gives you a boot: prompt which lets you boot up whichever partition you want to).