Windows!
It seems that Linux didn’t have a chance again this time. I was twiddling with the hard drive partitionings under Linux without knowing what I was doing and BAM out of a sudden I have a 60 GB space. It’s a good thing if only my hard drive is not maxed out at 40 GB. There can only be one explanation: a corruption in the table storing the partition data in the hard drive. Attempts to recover it gracefully using XP’s Disk Management console and Partition Magic 8 weren’t fruitful. I did not dare to twiddle further lest it made the situation worse. So I’ve decided to let go of Linux altogether and go back to Windows–which may require me reformatting the whole hard drive and start all over again now that the partitions are screwed.
Three cheers for stupidity!
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