When I built my computer, I had no problems at all. I mean, sure I was confused or puzzled by a few steps, and I was certainly challenged by the process, but I was never frustrated. All in all, it was a very empowering experience. I learned a lot and I was really successful.

And then I decided to upgrade. When I bought my graphics card, I made the mistake of not researching the computability of graphics card drivers with Ubuntu. It caused a whole weekend of headaches and troubleshooting and frustration before I got it working again.

So did I learn my lesson about doing research before making major changes to my computer? Apparently not.

Although I got Never Alone mostly working on Linux, I was having trouble with a few other things on WINE. Luckily, I recently found out about Windows Enterprise, which is essentially a legitimate 90-day free trial for developers to test stuff with. I’m… sort of a developer, and I wanted to test a few things (like dual-booting) on my computer. If I find Windows works better than WINE for certain stuff and dual-booting isn’t a huge hassle, then I might buy Windows after the 90 days. If not, I’ll just uninstall it. No big deal.

So of course I picked Windows 8.1, because why wouldn’t you pick the latest version of an OS? I mean, of course there are reasons to choose older versions of software and stuff. But the student discount version of of Windows is only in 8.1 right now, so if I were to buy after the trial I’d want that version. So if I’m going to try Windows, why not 8.1?

I’ll tell you why not. Apparently, the PCI WiFi card I have isn’t compatible with 8.1. It might kinda be compatible with 8. But it’s really for XP/Vista/7. I guess that’s what I get for choosing the older model of hardware and the newer model of software. The fixes range from updating Windows (which requires an internet connection, which I don’t have, because my WiFi card doesn’t work on Windows) to updating drivers (which I tried), to just buying a new WiFi card (which I did, and which Amazon is shipping to me now).

But I could have saved myself all this time troubleshooting if I had just done my research thoroughly and cross checked the computability of Every. Single. Component. 

Lesson learned: Do. Your. Research.