CrunchBang Linux

Here's what happened:

I got a new laptop last week, and installed Fedora to dual boot with Windows 7. Fedora kept locking up when I logged in, so last night I tried to install Ubuntu on that partition, and that's where things went wrong. After the liveCD wouldn't work,I used the Wubi installer, but it did this weird half-install within Windows, which is not what I wanted. I booted into Ubuntu and tried to migrate it to the Fedora partition, but would only accept an empty partition.

I opened whatever disk partitioner Ubuntu had, and deleted the Fedora partition. When I tried to create an ext4 or ext3 it gave an error, so I tried to reboot and got a minimal GRUB prompt, and couldn't get to Windows, Ubuntu, or Fedora. When I started Gparted form the liveCD, it said my whole hard disk was unallocated! Windows, including the recovery partition, appeared to be completely gone. I thought I was totally screwed.

I used my old computer, which runs Crunchbang,  to burn a newer version of Gparted, and used testdisk to get the partitions back. 4 hours and a few beers later, my partitions were finally back, but I still couldn't boot. This morning I installed Crunchbang on the laptop, and after running the first-time configuration script I rebooted, and there was Windows and Crunchbang both on the GRUB menu. Problem solved, Windows booted normally, and didn't seem to know it had just survived a near-death experience.

Long post, but this was quite an ordeal. This is the second time Crunchbang helped me save a computer. I learned three things from  this:
1) Never ever delete the partition you are booting from without installing an OS to replace it.
2) Never use a partition editor you don't know and trust.
3) Heavier, mainstream Linux distros are not necessarily "better".