I had perfectly good dual boot system (Win2k & Ubuntu) until I tried to install that piece of ****. Recently I’ve bought Zen Vision: M which, as I found out when I got home, only works w/ XP sp2. I know some of you will say that I should’ve checked beforehand but excuse me for expecting for it to work on still this very ubiquitous OS (2k). I won’t bullshit you by saying that I went and shelled out cash for XP right away. I took a OEM CD from my job to evaluate it first. Thank god for that!

1. The install CD never asked me if I want to reformat the 1st partition (originally 2k) It just assumed and ****ing installed itself along side 2k which broke the 2k install and created a “messy” XP install. BTW I backed up everything from win2k into Linux /home beforehand.

2. Upon second reinstall the XP recognized that it’s installed already so it actually gave me a choice of partition but again not reformat option, So I deleted the first partition and tried to create it again (and then reformat). IT TOLD ME THAT THERE ARE TOO MANY PARTITIONS ALTHOUGH I KNOW FOR SURE THAT MY LINUX PARTITIONS WERE IN EXTENDED SPACE not primary. I was forced to kill my nonessential partitions from Linux and just leave “/home” w/ all my data backed up for Windows to create a partition for itself. I figured I’ll get my data later when I install XP. At this point my Linux system is broken as well.

i. I finally do clean XP install. When I click on anything on the desktop it won’t open for any apparent reason. Only if I try to shut down the system all these windows pop up like they were being opened all the while.
ii. It won’t recognize Zen Vision: M ( And believe me I tried everything. Too long to go into but in all fairness it might be creative fault).
iii. What happened to the clear installation of hardware from 2k. Everything is searching for it’s own driver on any ****ing change. (switched mouse from 1 USB to another but the system cannot find a driver… WTF) I installed Alcohol 52 “virtual drive” & XP is trying to find a driver to it and didn’t find it… WTF
iv. Won’t connect to my existing network although I switched to WORKGROUP instead of XP default.

Eventually I had to go to sleep. If you have any ideas let me know. All I can say that if I didn’t have a choice as regular Joe and had to pay for this **** in the store I’d be beyond pissed. I haven’t paid for any M$ product in years and this just reassured me in my decision. Also … BYE BYE Soundlasters. If creative wants to support proprietary protocols like MTP you won’t get my money.

edit:

BTW I'm returning the Zen and buying Cowon (works perfectly w/ linux) and moving to linux 100% The only downside at this point is that I won't be able to play ALL games I want