I was installing a Microsoft component library that has to live on the C: drive. The installer stopped me: my 100 GB C: drive didn't have enough free space. When I checked, only a few hundred MB were left. The cleanup tools I looked at were either paid or not worth using, so I decided to try something riskier.
I asked Alibaba's Qwen how to enlarge C:. The first suggestion was Windows' built-in Disk Management: shrink a drive with plenty of free space, then extend C: into the unallocated space. I tried it, but the resize simply wouldn't go through. Qwen's second suggestion was AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard, a free partition tool that can resize C:.
With a tool in mind, I went ahead. I downloaded it, installed it, and launched it—only to see a payment prompt. I looked closer and realized I had clicked an ad and downloaded 360 Disk Management instead, which wanted money. I started over and got the correct AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard. I shrank D: by 40 GB and added that space to C:. Clicking Apply meant the machine would reboot.
The operation began at 4 p.m. and didn't finish until around 9 p.m. I sat there staring at a black screen with white text, and my mind drifted back to the Windows 98 era. Back then, reinstalling the system was routine: blue screens, driver upgrades, one-click backup and reinstall with Ghost—I knew the drill. From 2015 to 2022 I used a MacBook Pro with macOS and never reinstalled the system. Once an OS upgrade made the machine too slow, so I downgraded it. Later I sold the MacBook and switched to a desktop running Windows 10, which I've used ever since without a reinstall. But that's a detour.
After the reboot, Windows showed an error code. I rebooted again, and the same error code appeared. I was stunned. Fortunately, I had backed up several important folders recently. I assumed I couldn't reach the Windows desktop, so I used my wife's computer to make a Laobaicai bootable USB and downloaded a Windows image and Ghost. I plugged in the USB, rebooted, and prepared to reinstall the system. The boot screen passed—and then the password welcome screen appeared. The relief hit me all at once.
While making the USB, my brain had been racing through everything a reinstall would require: setting up Python, Node, and other programming environments; finding and reinstalling software; reconfiguring Git login credentials and user keys; redownloading local LLMs. None of that happened. Hardware has a price; data doesn't. Any disk operation carries risk, so back up first. Was it a lucky day? It felt like one.