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December 5th, 2002
05:36 pm - *tap tap*
After considerable humming, ha'ing and dithering, I delivered my unworking PC to Stockton Computer Centre at midday. At half-past three, they called me back to let me know that they had transferred the graphics card, sound card, memory, ISDN card, floppy drive, Zip disk drive, CD-ROM drive, CD-ROM rewriter and hard drive across, reinstalled Windows 98SE and installed all the drivers for the hardware on a new motherboard with a new processor (Duron 1200) in a new case with an upgraded power supply, extra USB hubs and so forth. All for GBP 170. This was after a little reluctance to commit to being able to getting the changeover done within little over 24 hours, which counts as underpromising and overperforming.
The new machine boots up much more quickly than the old one - always handy for Windows, that - and is noticeably faster. The case is easier to put on and get off. The annoying high-pitched squealing noise present on the old machine has gone (can I hear a quieter, higher-pitched one, though?) but there is a very large fan indeed attached to the Duron which is rather loud - probably too loud to sleep through, I fear.
I haven't given the machine much of a test yet and I am sure that the machine will slow back right down once I load it up with crap applications once more but there is a definite whoo-hoo on standby for the Stockton Computer Centre. So far so good!
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Copied about 5 GB of data from backups onto the (effectively) new computer, which was over 99% successful. Two CDs out of eight proved problematic; on one entitled video, three files would not transfer - one was a random .avi (excerpts from  ericklendl's Brainteaser ep, I think) and the other two were .avi files of the Lucky Numbers opening sequence. On another, about half a folderful of arcade game music mp3s would not transfer. However, I found the same folder on a different CD, all present and correct, but I had got confused when making backups and took two backups of arcade game music and zero backups of Amiga game music. Whoops. I have since got about half the folder of Amiga game music back from a backup about a year old. Still, at least all the important stuff has transferred properly - like my e-mail program files. I would have been a very unhappy bunny if they had become unrecoverable. Hurrah for the proper e-mail program! You might even start to receive e-mail from me now it's back! Does anyone else find that Winamp 3 slows down your PC much more than Winamp 2 ever did? I have uninstalled 3 and reinstalled 2 just to get some decent speed back. Oh, and a Duron 1200 is apparently about one third slower than a P-III 500 at Prime95, which I hadn't expected. | From: | ericklendl |
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| Date: | December 6th, 2002 01:18 am (UTC) |
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| | Talking of Winamp... | (Link) |
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...I often have an odd problem which doesn't seem to be documented anywhere, where Winamp will just completely omit about a three or four second burst of a given MP3. It doesn't do it consistently at the same point in the same file, and there's no pause to indicate the processor's busy; it'd just sound like "I'm a Barbie Gir-tic, it's fantastic!". Very peculiar, and I've never heard of it anywhere else.
Whaddya mean, excerpts of my Brainteaser appearance aren't important?
*flounces*
*inserts very obvious emoticon to illustrate that not offended really*
;-) Huzzah for improved machinery, esp. computers. :D Sometimes I find that starting over can be a blessing in disguise.
Especially with Windows. :-)
Glad you're back!
Ouch. Sorry to hear it.
My Windows system was increasingly unstable, possibly in connection with the motherboard death, possibly independently of it. I am in two minds whether or not to reinstall the two programs which I suspect most mucked about with Explorer - Dave's Quick Search Deskbar and Windows PowerPro. Very handy utilities indeed, but I'm in two minds whether I prefer a slightly-harder-to-use, more reliable computer or an easier-to-use, less reliable one.
"Meh", as they say. |
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