Playing doctor
12:05AM: It's been a while since I've had the chance to play with hardware. I'm no longer up on the latest and greatest, since I don't upgrade my computers on such a regular basis anymore. My most recent computer is about 3-years old. And it was assembled by a local computer store -- nothing special -- other than being prone to crashes when the harddisk is being maxed out. My previous computers, which died horrible deaths -- the server was smoking apparently, when I was in Newfoundland in 2007 -- all had dual processors, full SCSI, not an IDE drive in sight. Back when they were built -- 2000 -- the specs stuffed two full towers with the latest gear.
So, here I am, just after midnight, tearing apart a friend's old machine to fix it. It went into a coma recently, with the only sign of life, a annoying clicking, and a BIOS message proclaiming a hardware error and refusing to proceed further. The clicking was coming from a 40GB IBM Deskstar moving on to a well deserved afterlife (P/N:07N5640, S/N:YMMJ1210 -- being sold on eBay for the ridiculous sum of US$82.99). At first I thought the hardware problem was more than just disk -- thought maybe it was the IDE controller as well. The machine has both a controller on the motherboard and a Promise PCI card supporting two additional channels. I haven't seen a Promise card in years. Before I went nuts on SCSI drives, I expanded storage using Promise cards! I'm such a geek.
So I swapped out the 40GB Deskstar for a 160GB Western Digital that I had sitting around with my computer junk. (I can't bear to part with some of my computer junk, and low and behold, some of it is coming in useful.) I rummaged through my old CDROMs, and found an OEM CD of XP that belong to some long dead computer. I know Windows isn't used in afterlife, so I feel fairly safe in using disc and serial number. Being an old disc, it was the first release of XP -- no service pack release. So I googled for the latest XP service pack, and while I was downloading the 324MB SP3, I came across this great site telling me all about slipstreaming. Totally cool! Never knew that before. So I tried it -- and it worked! I now have an updated XP disc that will save me quite a bit of time.
12:38AM: The 160GB Western Digital is currently being formatted by XP setup. 70% complete, right now.
As I'm writing this, I'm thinking of something I came across about a year ago. I was looking for furniture donations on the local Freecycle site, when I came across a guy who was looking for computer spare parts. He was assembling computers from the donations being given away, loading up an OS (Linux if I recall) and some open source packages, then giving the computers away again, via Freecycle. Not a bad thing to do -- especially for people who couldn't afford a PC. I'm thinking, but I live in a condo and don't have a garage.
3:05AM: XP finally loaded. Other two drives in the computer (Maxtor 120GB each) are full of crap. I'm going to blow one of them away and reload XP on it. There's no need for three drives in the machine. Also, WGA hates me. I used the S/N before on an older computer that is no more. MS now wants me to buy it again. WTF? I already paid for it - and I'm only using it once!
5:38PM: I'm reloading XP on one of the 120GB Maxtor's that I just blew away. Repartitioned the drive -- just one partition, and I'm now formatting it the long way with NTFS. Currently at 7%.
6:26PM: Formatting completed, and XP loaded. Now booting up for the first time in order to spend another hour installing Windows. According to the setup screen, this is "exciting." OK, maybe the first time. Years and many reinstalls later, you just want it to go real fast and don't give any surprises.
7:47PM: XP full loaded. The second 120GB is hanging in the case from the power cable. It's working. The tedious work of cleaning up the drive, loading applications, etc., now starts. Now, it's just time. This will probably take me the rest of the week to complete, as I'm back to work tomorrow.
So, here I am, just after midnight, tearing apart a friend's old machine to fix it. It went into a coma recently, with the only sign of life, a annoying clicking, and a BIOS message proclaiming a hardware error and refusing to proceed further. The clicking was coming from a 40GB IBM Deskstar moving on to a well deserved afterlife (P/N:07N5640, S/N:YMMJ1210 -- being sold on eBay for the ridiculous sum of US$82.99). At first I thought the hardware problem was more than just disk -- thought maybe it was the IDE controller as well. The machine has both a controller on the motherboard and a Promise PCI card supporting two additional channels. I haven't seen a Promise card in years. Before I went nuts on SCSI drives, I expanded storage using Promise cards! I'm such a geek.
So I swapped out the 40GB Deskstar for a 160GB Western Digital that I had sitting around with my computer junk. (I can't bear to part with some of my computer junk, and low and behold, some of it is coming in useful.) I rummaged through my old CDROMs, and found an OEM CD of XP that belong to some long dead computer. I know Windows isn't used in afterlife, so I feel fairly safe in using disc and serial number. Being an old disc, it was the first release of XP -- no service pack release. So I googled for the latest XP service pack, and while I was downloading the 324MB SP3, I came across this great site telling me all about slipstreaming. Totally cool! Never knew that before. So I tried it -- and it worked! I now have an updated XP disc that will save me quite a bit of time.
12:38AM: The 160GB Western Digital is currently being formatted by XP setup. 70% complete, right now.
As I'm writing this, I'm thinking of something I came across about a year ago. I was looking for furniture donations on the local Freecycle site, when I came across a guy who was looking for computer spare parts. He was assembling computers from the donations being given away, loading up an OS (Linux if I recall) and some open source packages, then giving the computers away again, via Freecycle. Not a bad thing to do -- especially for people who couldn't afford a PC. I'm thinking, but I live in a condo and don't have a garage.
3:05AM: XP finally loaded. Other two drives in the computer (Maxtor 120GB each) are full of crap. I'm going to blow one of them away and reload XP on it. There's no need for three drives in the machine. Also, WGA hates me. I used the S/N before on an older computer that is no more. MS now wants me to buy it again. WTF? I already paid for it - and I'm only using it once!
5:38PM: I'm reloading XP on one of the 120GB Maxtor's that I just blew away. Repartitioned the drive -- just one partition, and I'm now formatting it the long way with NTFS. Currently at 7%.
6:26PM: Formatting completed, and XP loaded. Now booting up for the first time in order to spend another hour installing Windows. According to the setup screen, this is "exciting." OK, maybe the first time. Years and many reinstalls later, you just want it to go real fast and don't give any surprises.
7:47PM: XP full loaded. The second 120GB is hanging in the case from the power cable. It's working. The tedious work of cleaning up the drive, loading applications, etc., now starts. Now, it's just time. This will probably take me the rest of the week to complete, as I'm back to work tomorrow.
Comments
Post a Comment