My vote is to fuck Windows and install Linux
If you go back to Windows, I'll accuse you of beaten wife syndrome!
I would, I really would. But it's a lot more like the guy in that heroin story you posted, except with world of warcraft instead of heroin. I don't have enough confidence in myself to keep it working in wine or the like, and I can't go without my fix.
Anyways, I now have a version of windows installed that won't give me shit. I spent about 4 hours on google before I decided to give up. I tried a bunch of shit from people who seemed to have similar problems but none of it worked. Thankfully though, I found out I could boot into "safe mode with command prompt" (I had tried just safe mode before and it didn't work) and back up all my stuff easily.