How To Brick Your PC Before An Exam
It began with a late night and a YouTube rabbit hole with Network Chuck and David Bombal. I should've just been studying for the Network+ exam in 2 days, but I couldn't help myself. I had the bright idea to create a dual boot setup with Windows on one SSD and Kali on the other, giving both environments as much breathing room and resources as I could.
I flashed a Kali ISO onto a thumb drive, disabled secure boot and fast boot in the firmware, and pointed the installer at what I assumed was empty space. A voice in my head whispered that I should back up first, but curiosity pressed the continue button.
I had no idea at the time, but the Windows boot loader rested on its own SSD, which was exactly the one I was about to put Kali on, and the installer warned that my choice would wipe everything on the target drive. I also had no local Windows users setup and Bitlocker enabled as well, which made everything afterwards a bit messy.
When the system rebooted I was greeted not by Kali, but by a solemn blue screen asking for my Bitlocker key. After that, it became very clear to me that something was very wrong as I couldn't login to my machine anymore.
A rescue attempt followed. I booted from Windows installation media, summoned diskpart, and discovered raw partitions where NTFS once lived. TestDisk salvaged a few files, although most of the data had already been nuked. By the end of it, I memorized my Bitlocker key and could boot into BIOS with my eyes closed.
The next morning once the reality of the loss settled in, I rebuilt. A clean Windows 11 Pro install restored basic functionality, luckily OneDrive saved the day and restored the majority of my files. The experience burned several lessons into my memory. Full backups need to be bomb proof, every weekly backup I made was gone as soon as I installed Kali. Warnings deserve to be read because embarrassment is cheaper than data recovery. Documentation written by the people who build the software is more reliable than ChatGPT. Keep experiments in virtual sandboxes where a snapshot and a click undo the worst mistakes. Finally, save projects that can brick the box for after a home proctored exam.
My computer is alive again, and so is my respect for the installer that politely asked me if I was certain. Next time I will listen. Until then, I offer this story as a cautionary tale for anyone chasing a dual boot setup without a tested backup plan.
