SP Happenings #17
Posted Tuesday, September 30, 2003 - 20:23 CET by Sorcerer

Boy, this sure has been an eventful week for me, even though I didn't get to do a single thing that I actually planned on for the period. Shortly after I wrote last week's Happenings I had my computer upgraded (replaced the motherboard, graphic & sound cards, CPU and RAM), and thought it'd be a relatively painless process. How wrong I was. After the install was over, my sound was dead, I couldn't get the graphic card to work with a higher resolution than the safe mode 640x480 at 60Hz refresh (ugh), my ADSL modem wouldn't connect... In short, my Windows 98 installation was beyond repair. While I was planning on eventually switching to XP, here I was, forced to do it straight away, in a barely operational OS to boot.

I was able to get a backup dial-up connection working so I was at least able to check my mail (though not much else), and then I got to work, backing up 5 years' worth of accumulated software, settings, mail, files... in short, this alone took me two days. Then I converted my primary hard drive to NTFS, installed Windows XP, and started from scratch again. I have to say I took an instant liking to XP, because it established my ADSL & LAN connections all by itself (via another computer on the LAN 's settings), so I got my high-speed Internet back the moment XP finished installing. I then carried over some of my old settings via the Files & Settings Transfer Wizard, which also went through almost without a glitch. Imagine my surprise.

After that was done I had to reinstall about two dozen programs that I regularly use, reset all of their settings and, finally, finished the whole switch to XP yesterday. Oh, and not to forget, I also downloaded and installed a bunch of XP fixes from Microsoft. Considering I only really got my working environment back today, everything I planned for in the previous Happenings got shifted down the schedule for a week. I haven't even had the chance to start with the conversion to the new design yet, so another site update in the current one is forthcoming (probably by the end of this week).

Oh, and just in case you're curious what my newly installed components are: MSI KT4-VL motherboard, AMD Athlon XP 2200+, 512MB RAM and an NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200. Certainly nothing very impressive, but the best I could do on my budget. And coming to this from a 750Mhz Duron, 256MB RAM and a GeForce 2 MX 400, the difference is substantial. At least I should be able to run Neverwinter Nights and The Temple of Elemental Evil decently now. ;)