More Power to My Elbow
I really like Windows XP. It spends its time doing nice things for me. But today I did something really horrible to the poor operating system. I've been chugging along with a Pentium 800 for a couple of years and most of the time it has done fine. However, if you start doing things with DVDs you pretty soon find that you need a bit more under the bonnet. That and the fact that I was in danger of having the slowest PC in the entire family - including the laptops!
So, down to Quaytech (a local bits and bobs supplier) and away with an Athlon, a motherboard, and a wodge of RAM. Then I did my horrible thing. I opened up the machine, replaced the mother board and rebooted. Windows XP starts up and finds that everything (and I mean everything) has been moved around. It is like coming home and finding the bed is now in the kitchen. XP throws a hissy fit and then falls over. So far, so good. Now I do the clever thing. Boot from the distribution CD and do a repair installation. Same kind of install, although with bits missing 'cos XP knows some of the answers already.
At the end of the install the system just boots and I'm back to where I started. Everything is in the same place and it all works. Only one thing left to do, and that is install the updates. So it is off down to windowsupdate.com (which is very upset and insists on 23 or so installs) and away we go. Slight hiccup here, in that the machine persists in crashing during the update. No matter, simply download the administrative install (which runs entirely on the machine) and away we go.
I now have exactly the same machine, only three times as fast and with double the memory. I tried something similar with Windows 98 a few years ago and lost an entire weekend picking up the pieces. Kudos to Windows XP for this.
And now for the health warnings: I was pretty sure that it would just work since I had done something similar before. However, I also made quite a few backups before I embarked on my escapade, and I had a fallback position with a spare machine to get me onto the internet and keep things going. So, if you are going to try this I would say that it is possible, but remember that thing can go wrong as well as right.
So, down to Quaytech (a local bits and bobs supplier) and away with an Athlon, a motherboard, and a wodge of RAM. Then I did my horrible thing. I opened up the machine, replaced the mother board and rebooted. Windows XP starts up and finds that everything (and I mean everything) has been moved around. It is like coming home and finding the bed is now in the kitchen. XP throws a hissy fit and then falls over. So far, so good. Now I do the clever thing. Boot from the distribution CD and do a repair installation. Same kind of install, although with bits missing 'cos XP knows some of the answers already.
At the end of the install the system just boots and I'm back to where I started. Everything is in the same place and it all works. Only one thing left to do, and that is install the updates. So it is off down to windowsupdate.com (which is very upset and insists on 23 or so installs) and away we go. Slight hiccup here, in that the machine persists in crashing during the update. No matter, simply download the administrative install (which runs entirely on the machine) and away we go.
I now have exactly the same machine, only three times as fast and with double the memory. I tried something similar with Windows 98 a few years ago and lost an entire weekend picking up the pieces. Kudos to Windows XP for this.
And now for the health warnings: I was pretty sure that it would just work since I had done something similar before. However, I also made quite a few backups before I embarked on my escapade, and I had a fallback position with a spare machine to get me onto the internet and keep things going. So, if you are going to try this I would say that it is possible, but remember that thing can go wrong as well as right.
posted by Rob Miles at
Saturday, August 02, 2003
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