I stayed up late on Friday and Saturday nights, and slept in on both Saturday and Sunday mornings. I got my new computer on Wednesday, and finally had the opportunity to wipe it clean and get it up and running. This is the first new computer I’ve purchased literally, since like 1998. As far as the rest of the weekend went, it was pretty much just that; messing around with computers, and watching baseball.
I actually feel quite accomplished on the computer front. I had a general idea of what I wanted to accomplish with my brand new machine, as well as the older LEAURNING machine, and although altogether things didn’t go as smoothly as I had hoped it would have, I think I managed to overcome and figure out all obstacles that got in the way, and in the end result, I seem to have accomplished everything I had set out to do.
Predictably, the new machine wasn’t really an issue; the only genuine hang up I ran into was the fact that I had mistakenly loaded a 32-bit version of Windows 7 onto it, forgetting that it was a 64-bit machine. Once corrected, the true potential of the machine was tapped, and hopefully I’ll be able to get at least 1-2 good years’ worth of productive output from it before I grow frustrated with it and want something newer and sleeker. I ran into one nuisance of an Adobe problem, due to the 64-bit nature of my system, which basically made InDesign files indistinguishable from generic system files, but it was nothing that I couldn’t ultimately figure out through sniffing around Google for the answer.
LEAURNING on the other hand, was the challenge of my weekend. Ironic how I spent more time dicking around on the obsolete older machine, when I had a nice new one begging to be played with. But LEAURNING isn’t a bad machine in its own right, so I still felt that it could still be useful, as long as it was utilized correctly – meaning I had to get Windows 7 off of it, and get it back to an XP machine. Simply put, every part of the hardware was saying NO to Windows 7, but I didn’t discover this until after I had already gone too far, and installed it anyway. I leaurned the hard way of all the speed bumps and walls run into to get it back to an adequate working XP machine, but having overcome everything, I feel accomplished and better off for the experience gained in the process.
First off, I leaurned that once you install Windows 7, or even Vista, you are not supposed to go back to a preceding operating system, therefore, they will not let you. Inserting a Windows XP disc while running a newer version of Windows will only result in inaccessible setup files. So that being said, the only option at this point is to do a clean install, which is the methodology I prefer anyway.
However, LEARUNING is running a SATA/150 PCI card, to which XP standard installations doesn’t install the drivers for, upon initialization. Meaning, it doesn’t see any hard drives to actually install an operating system onto. Upon further research, I leaurned that for XP, such drivers have to be manually loaded from a floppy drive, and obviously, I do not have a floppy drive and have not since like 2002, and even then I haven’t used one since 1997. So at first, I thought I was fucked, and that I would either have to acquire a floppy drive and floppy disks in order to get through this, or I would have to settle with reloading Windows 7 on a machine that really did not want to be running Windows 7, in order to have a functional machine.
This weekend, I learned about the process of slipstreaming, and created a new Windows XP installation disc with the necessary PCI card drivers pre-loaded onto it. The feeling of learning and applying knowledge to something new to me was such a gratifying feeling, and the emotion of successful victory upon seeing listed hard drives, ready for an operating system to be loaded onto it, was a magnificent feeling. I felt like nothing was going to stop me from my ambition after overcoming this obstacle.
And nothing did. Things certainly tried, from the wireless card constantly resulting in a blue screen of death when trying to initialize, to my 50” plasma not accepting the screen resolution set by the machine. Both were minor problems overcome by doing some simple research, and discovering that one of my sticks of RAM was going bad, and upon removal, the wireless working again, and leaurning that my television doesn’t want to run output from a computer unless it was set to 1280 x 768. Odd, and slightly discouraging that I have to run at a stretched resolution in order for it to work, but at least it’s working. I’ll hopefully tweak and figure out the semantics at another time.
But in the end, my weekend of rest and computers was successful. I have a brand new computer that is running great in my room, and LEAURNING is back to running the more optimized for its hardware XP, and is downstairs hooked up to the plasma. When I had to assign a profile name for LEAURNING, I couldn’t think of anything right away, but then for some reason, the jingle from the cougarlife.com radio spots rang in my head, and then it couldn’t have been more appropriate – an older machine that still has some life in it, and just wants to have fun, and is willing to be used for nothing but fun. I dub thee “cougar.”
