How I ****ed up! · DIGIT-ARC

This story could have many titles...

How I ****ed up!
What not to do when installing MSOffice 2013
Greed will cause pain
7 mistakes of my life

I chose the former.

Prologue:-
Two months back my friend told me that in their company Microsoft is having a campaign and giving away Microsoft Office 2013 license @Rs 450/- I was really surprised as this includes all MS packages at those things at such cheap price. I though of acquiring one and asked him if could buy more than one (he too wanted to buy one for himself)
Couple of days later he informed that only one license can be bought by one employee. He could order one for him which I would take and he would manage one form him somehow. I agreed. That evening I received a mail from MS asking me to buy this promotional license from a given link.

Present day:-

Day 1:-

After two months of this mail I, on one fine night thought of buying that license. Transaction was smooth. Got a mail from MS including license key and Office download link.
When I downloaded, it downloaded a 2 MB exe file.
.
.
.
I executed it and it told it would download 5.5 GB of data and very innocently it mentioned that download (DL from now) directory has to be "C:\" only. I searched online for a solution for this as I had only 900MB free space on my C drive. Found nothing.

I then decided to upgrade my system(M1). It was long time I was living on space crunch on C and in dire need of realigning of my partitions. It was Friday night and I decided to buy a 500GB the very next day.

As upgrade was decided I devised a plan on how to use the HDDs now. I finalized existing 160GB drive as a single partition where OS will be installed (I use Win 7) and using the new 500GB for rest of work.

Now, I was scared of installing Win7 again with all the drivers, the huge amount of updates it would download and then all the necessary softwares. I thought of cloning the partition(M2). Found articles online on things I need for this job. Downloaded "Ultimate Boot CD"(UBCD from now on) and burned the ISO. Boot from CD and tried to backup my C drive in my external hard drive with the help of "EaseUS" software. Another shock! Got a prompt the operation would delete all data of the destination drive! Immediate STOP! As the drive holds all my movies!

What now?!! What now?!! Bingo!!! I could just delete all but C drive partition and then extend C drive, why had I not thought ago?!! Shame on me(M3)
Deleted rest of the drives. They were all logical drives. So, even after deleting them and extending them into one single drive C drive won't extend. WTF? Was it clashing because of C is Primary and the rest 120GB is logical?! Could be. Deleted the whole 120GB and made it non-dos. Tried to extend again. Did not work again. Why the fcuk it won't extend?!!
Is disk cloning only option now?! Okz...I'll clone the partition then (M4)

So, I decided to buy one 500GB HDD and another 32GB pen drive to take backup of C drive partition. And went to sleep

Day 2:-

Went to chandni chowk and bought a Seagate 500GB HDD @2975/- and a Sandisk cruzer 32GB @ 1000/-. Happily returned home. The time is 5PM on Saturday. My plan of watching "Jolly LLB" canceled already.

Plugged in new 500GB drive, attached 32GB USB and boot system from UBCD. Partitioned new HDD. and I was all set to clone my C drive.

As I was going to start this project I suddenly remembered I don't have my Win7 DVD with me. Should I have one or should I not? Today I wonder is that even a thing to ponder upon? No PC user (specially a Windows user) in this world has embarked on such a fail-prone path without accompanying his faithful windows installation disk. I, the great Rhitwick was clouded with over-confidence and convinced myself "there won't be any issue, no need of the disk" (M5). I Could have easily created one disk. I had the image with me, my PC was still working flawlessly, the blank DVD seller is just below my housing. And I thought everything would be alright(M6). Poor me...oh...poor, poor me!

Boot from UBCD, fired up "EaseUS" again. Yeah baby! This time I was ready. Selected option of cloning partition to pen drive. Took 2 Hrs to copy to pen drive. Once done. I fired up "GParted" from UBCD and deleted C drive. Created a new partition, somehow it became Logical. I did not suspect anything. Fired up EaseUs and restored partition.
I noticed one thing this time, instead of using the whole 150GB as a single partition, the tool made two sections, one as same as the backup i.e. one 30GB primary drive and another 120GB non-dos!!!
Okz, I had no issue with that. I'll extend again.
System reboot....alas! Not entering to Win7. Bootmanager not found. And instantly I remembered I made the gravest mistake...did not take back-up of my bootmgr (M7)!!!

Again Gparted, delete and create primary partition.
Again EaseUS, again copy, not booting to Win 7

Again Gparted, delete and non-dos.
Again EaseUS, again copy, not booting to Win 7

What now...what now? How to fix. I did not take backup of my C drive as I was too confident of cloning. What now? How about fixing bootmgr?! That could work!

There were at least 10 boot mgr fixing software in UBCD, tried almost all till now.

Tried fixing bootmgr, did not work
Tried recovering, did not work
Tried creating one, did not work
Tried accessing Boot.INI file from my now restored image, did not work...

It was 11.30PM, I was hungry...had my diner. And again started from scratch, Gparted, EaseUS, Boot fixing. No luck. I was getting the hint I ****ed up.
3.30AM went to sleep.

Day 3:-

Mom-dad is coming today. Can't invest much time. Morning I tried few more bootmgr fixing softwares. No luck. Again resumed at night with rest of the tools...no luck.
Now I was really missing my Win 7 installation disk and was on the brink of jumping from roof. Then I remembered this friend of mine who just one week back took a copy of Win 7 from me. Called him up, begged to give me the disk ASAP tomorrow. He was in Midnapore.

Went to sleep accepting my defeat.

Day 4:-
He came to my office today and lend me the Win 7 disk. I'll start as fresh today. Wish me luck guys. And learn from my mistakes. Don't be greedy in your life.

wtf !!

M$ can land you in such sh!t !!

I'm happy my pen drive is always win-7-bootable, and was planning to dual boot with UBCD since many days, guess the time has come.

Good luck!

LOL, that reminded me of my own misadventures. We always know exactly what could go wrong but take no precautions.

Livin' on the edge, people.

he he poor rhitwick...dont mess with My crow soft

Poor Rhitwick ....did too much of a hassel ...more knowledge more confusion it seems

I have also stuck up many times like this...and ultimately formatted and installed fresh

OMG Rs. 450 for Office 2013? I WANT I WANT I WANT!!

And good luck getting it done right this time!

Extreme Gamer said:
OMG Rs. 450 for Office 2013? I WANT I WANT I WANT!!

And good luck getting it done right this time!

Microsoft Home Use Program - Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2013. The software suite includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Publisher, Access and more!
It's for corporates, who partnered with Microsoft via HUP.
Good luck with that!
-------------------------------------------------------------------
@rhitwick: I don't know whether it is feasible or not. Whatif, we renamed another partition, say D-drive with over 5GB as C? Would have worked?

Lesson learned the hard way

Gearbox said:
@rhitwick: I don't know whether it is feasible or not. Whatif, we renamed another partition, say D-drive with over 5GB as C? Would have worked?

No. It won't. Can you imagine the impact of changing drive letter on my the then installed programs?!!!

@gearbox: Yeah but I don't have contacts

thanks for the link though

W

if only you didn't gave up in the beginning itself.there is no way i will accept that there is no standalone MS installer for its any software.just a simple google search("MS office 2013 direct download link") & 1st result on the 1st page itself gave me the link:
[Direct Download Link] Microsoft Office 2013 Professional Plus, Visio 2013 and Project 2013 Free Trial - Tweaking with Vishal
*care.dlservice.microsoft.com/dl/do...786570A1/OfficeProfessionalPlus_x86_en-us.img

whitestar_999 said:
if only you didn't gave up in the beginning itself.there is no way i will accept that there is no standalone MS installer for its any software.just a simple google search("MS office 2013 direct download link") & 1st result on the 1st page itself gave me the link:
[Direct Download Link] Microsoft Office 2013 Professional Plus, Visio 2013 and Project 2013 Free Trial - Tweaking with Vishal
*care.dlservice.microsoft.com/dl/do...786570A1/OfficeProfessionalPlus_x86_en-us.img

Dude I tried that too. Downloaded MS Office 2013 of exact version and installed. While activating with my key it prompted the key is for a different version of "Professional Plus" whereas I just installed a "Professional Plus"

I've been there you know.

W

did you tried the exe version or img version because there are people confirming that the key bought through HUP program works with these img links but not exe links?also the official installer which you got in your order email will not allow you to customize anything meaning once run entire office 2013 suite will be installed with no option of selecting which components to install & even after installing you can not use "add remove programs" to uninstall individual office components only option will be repair.but these img versions will let you customize as usual.
[H]ard|Forum - View Single Post - MS Office 2013 Professional Plus for $9.95!

whitestar_999 said:
did you tried the exe version or img version because there are people confirming that the key bought through HUP program works with these img links but not exe links?also the official installer which you got in your order email will not allow you to customize anything meaning once run entire office 2013 suite will be installed with no option of selecting which components to install & even after installing you can not use "add remove programs" to uninstall individual office components only option will be repair.but these img versions will let you customize as usual.
[H]ard|Forum - View Single Post - MS Office 2013 Professional Plus for $9.95!

EXE version. And, I guessed the idea that with 5.5GB size it could not be a installable file. Well that's bad but mhy PC is up again with 150GB C drive

Bring 'em on :evil:

W

download the .img version file this time & use the key.that 3-5gb size on C is required only if you install the whole office 2013 suite which is the only way of installing using the official download link.with img file select only word,powerpoint,excel & total install should be less than 2gb.

whitestar_999 said:
download the .img version file this time & use the key.that 3-5gb size on C is required only if you install the whole office 2013 suite which is the only way of installing using the official download link.with img file select only word,powerpoint,excel & total install should be less than 2gb.

Better option is this: LibreOffice 4 is here!

To get something for cheap, why go through such a hassle? Either pay for the full version or use excellent alternatives.

W

Krow said:
Better option is this: LibreOffice 4 is here!

To get something for cheap, why go through such a hassle? Either pay for the full version or use excellent alternatives.

to get something cheap you always have to go through hassle

the cheapest office 2013 home edition costs ~4000 that too for 1 pc license only.i agree that it is overkill for simple home/informal use but for some serious/professional/academic use MS office still is the preferred choice not to mention free of any java dependency whatsoever.

Krow said:
Better option is this: LibreOffice 4 is here!

To get something for cheap, why go through such a hassle? Either pay for the full version or use excellent alternatives.

I actually tried that recently. Removed Office 2010 and installed LibreOffice. Then uninstalled again.
And, why use a low end software when I can get the best at such a cheap price.

It was not total disaster.

My PC got upgraded.
Fresh OS install after 2 yrs.
Few bookmarks were too sensitive to delete...they are gone now.
A chance of fresh start...

Backup backup all the way!

W

Fresh OS install after 2 yrs.

i do fresh install only when changing cpu/mobo.my last xp install ran for ~5 years & after mobo died i am running same win 7 install for ~2 years now.btw what's the update on your office install.

rhitwick said:
It was not total disaster.

My PC got upgraded.
Fresh OS install after 2 yrs.
Few bookmarks were too sensitive to delete...they are gone now.
A chance of fresh start...

lol dude after so much trouble ....
still its good to c ur positive attitude.....
P.S : exactly for which people is that offer???

whitestar_999 said:
i do fresh install only when changing cpu/mobo.my last xp install ran for ~5 years & after mobo died i am running same win 7 install for ~2 years now.btw what's the update on your office install.

Oh, updates...I thought my fight was interesting enough to tell.

Office downloaded and installed. Took too much time and retries but installed.

b/w, all hell was not end with fresh install.

I installed Win7 in HDD1 i.e. of 160GB, prior to that from boot menu partitioned my other HDD i.e. of 500GB in 4 drives. After OS install I find the biggest drive is not showing up in My Computer!!! I opened "Manage-->Disk Management" and voila! its there as NTFS, marked as D drive but not showing up in My Computer. It was marked as windows backup files, etc. I did not understand its importance and deleted it!

Rebooted system...system not booting. BOOTMGR missing!

I rebooted and tried to repair windows...it said windows not found! I reinstalled Windows. But this time deleted both drives i.e. I had one 160GB non-DOS partition and one 500GB non-DOS partition.

Installed Win7 in HDD1 i.e. 160GB drive. System boot...BOOTMGR missing! I was like WTF?!!! I just reinstalled it and did not even touch it. What went wrong? Checked BIOS to ensure I've HDD1 as preferred BOOT device...it was. I re-installed Win7 again

Reboot...same problem. BOOTMGR missing! I was really cursing myself now..why did I even bought MS Office 2013?!!! :'(

Reboot system, went to BIOS, changed preferred BOOT device to HDD2 i.e. 500GB disk. Reboot and......system boots. Why it boots when my OS is installed in another HDD?!!!! Because that god-damned a$$hole developers of MS did some trickery and now the OS stored 100 fcuking MB of boot related data in HDD2 which makes it the primary device to boot from!!!

Nonsense!!!

gta0gagan said:
lol dude after so much trouble ....
still its good to c ur positive attitude.....
P.S : exactly for which people is that offer???

You know, Plato told...everyone gets a chance in their lifetime to be a philosopher, specially when their favourite vase gets broken.

W

looks like you needed some practice with win 7 install since you just understood the importance of that 100mb system partition.in future use virtual machine to practice.

@gta0gagan,this offer is known as microsoft HUP(home use program).it is basically for employees of a company which use MS office & has also subscribed to HUP scheme.under this scheme employees are given MS office at dirt cheap rate(Rs.450 for India) so that they can work on company projects at home using office.to get this you must have an official company email address & program code for your company HUP.

rhitwick said:
I actually tried that recently. Removed Office 2010 and installed LibreOffice. Then uninstalled again.
And, why use a low end software when I can get the best at such a cheap price.

It was not total disaster.

My PC got upgraded.
Fresh OS install after 2 yrs.
Few bookmarks were too sensitive to delete...they are gone now.
A chance of fresh start...

Erm... LibreOffice is not low-end software. I don't know about your usage, but I mostly use office suites for typing reviews. LibreOffice Writer is excellent for the purpose. My company uses OpenOffice, so I have no compatibility issues thankfully.

MS Office might be needed for advanced users, not sure. But most people I know use pirated MS Office for basic purposes. LibreOffice is more than capable of replacing MS Office for these users.

Krow said:
Erm... LibreOffice is not low-end software. I don't know about your usage, but I mostly use office suites for typing reviews. LibreOffice Writer is excellent for the purpose. My company uses OpenOffice, so I have no compatibility issues thankfully.

MS Office might be needed for advanced users, not sure. But most people I know use pirated MS Office for basic purposes. LibreOffice is more than capable of replacing MS Office for these users.

In my present company we are made to work on Ubuntu 12. I use LibreOffice there every day. I liked it at first and installed in my home PC. Trust me, its linux version is way way better than its windows version.

^ Lucky guys working with OSS's in companies too.

rhitwick said:
In my present company we are made to work on Ubuntu 12. I use LibreOffice there every day. I liked it at first and installed in my home PC. Trust me, its linux version is way way better than its windows version.

I use both. Linux at home and Windows in office. In Linux, I haven't been able to change the dictionary. The spell check breaks when I use anything apart from US English. Other than that, love using LibreOffice in Linux. In Windows, I prefer it to MS Office because it does what I need efficiently.

Gearbox said:
^ Lucky guys working with OSS's in companies too.

Apparently, our firm switched after anti-piracy raids.

I have the 2010 HUP edition and it's well worth the Rs.450 you spend on it. Of course, the licensing agreement explicitly tells you to get rid of the software once you leave the organization, so that may be a downer for some.

R

I worked on MS office for nearly 5 years in office and now I am using OpenOffice (my new company is sucha large org that they cut down the operational costs to earn more profits

)..

Believe me, its a crap compared to MS Office and its integrations.
Now i miss MS office features - Word/Excel/Outlook/Communicator the most.

Sh!t happens bro,sometimes.

$hit happens!....with geeks

I m planing for fresh install win 7 this weekend

Can I get a long-story-short version ? Don't have much time for TDF.

JojoTheDragon said:
Can I get a long-story-short version ? Don't have much time for TDF.

I fcuked up while installing MS Office 2013. Its fixed now.

rhitwick said:
I fcuked up while installing MS Office 2013. Its fixed now.

Even I have faced such a trouble after installing OpenSuse on my computer. After trying a lot to get rid of some problems in it, I decided to delete. It was a dual boot with windows xp. I just deleted the linux partition and happily turned off the computer. Next day I was greeted with a boot error

I forgot that linux had deleted the windows boot manager. I was a complete noob at that time and had no other computer to search on internet what to do. And finally used the Windows XP CD to repair the partition. Believe me my friends, you must install and uninstall atleast one linux os on your PC to be a geek :-D

.

Also, you could just have used CCleaner to free up space on your C partition or moved some files from C drive to other drives.

rhitwick said:
I fcuked up while installing MS Office 2013. Its fixed now.

Dang mate. That wasn't a proper summary.

thanks anyway.

anyway made some time to read it. Just wanna know one thing, do you actually use ms office ? I would always install it, but found that I never use it. For minor text stuff, word pad works just fine.

hari1 said:
you must install and uninstall atleast one linux os on your PC to be a geek.

Did that in my college days. Almost all flavours.

Also, you could just have used CCleaner to free up space on your C partition or moved some files from C drive to other drives.

What do you think, with 900Mb free space what was keeping me alive. I had shifted my "Program files" folder to D drive already, "My Documents" folder, "My Pictures" and then I was left with 900MB.

JojoTheDragon said:
Dang mate. That wasn't a proper summary. thanks anyway.

anyway made some time to read it. Just wanna know one thing, do you actually use ms office ? I would always install it, but found that I never use it. For minor text stuff, word pad works just fine.

I use it at home, specially Outlook. At times need to work on office documents at home. Then it comes handy. And I use Ms Excel very much at home.

if u needed it that much then its a must buy.........

Not trying to revive an old thread, but I thought it relevant to add here that I´ve prevailed over the M$ HUP program. Don´t ask me how, but I´ll say this much, that I had to modify the HardOCP method to access the purchase location. Best Rs. 450 of my life lol.

G

Do you know m$haft have a lame limit on primary partitions = 4? Did you screwed because of it?

Extreme Gamer said:
Not trying to revive an old thread, but I thought it relevant to add here that I´ve prevailed over the M$ HUP program. Don´t ask me how, but I´ll say this much, that I had to modify the HardOCP method to access the purchase location. Best Rs. 450 of my life lol.

hardOCP method???

gta0gagan said:
hardOCP method???

Check the previous posts. A link to the HardOCP forums is given. The post linked to is from the the thread where a guy posted a way for non-employees to take advantage of the home use program

yeah man we all faced such **** at some situation mine started with win 8 expansion pack for win 7 installed worked perfect restarted damn icon vanished cant log in even formatted bt cant format c coz it had imp files + gAme setups installed in d.then two win partition created...and dont hav hdd space..