Computer disaster - Go 64-bit!

Our computer went awol about 2 weeks ago. The motherboard was knackered, so after a lot of testing and praying, we accepted that we had to put the machine in for an unscheduled upgrade.

New motherboard: Asus SK8-Deluxe with 5.1 sound
New processor: AMD Athlon 64 3200 (running at about 2.2 GHz)
Plus: new power supply of 400w, new fans and some other generic stuff.

Gemma's dad insisted on doing all the work (he loves doing all that stuff). All went well until Gemma's dad told me that he was going to back up our OS hard disk in order to re-format it for the new operating system install. Alarm bells went off in my head, and I desperately tried to stop him from doing any of this without my making sure that everything was properly backed up.

After the back up and reformat, I advised to install Windows XP x64 RC2 which is legally available for free, and would make best use of the 64-bit capabilities of the new system. This done, the computer was returned to my care and I hooked up all the peripherals and switched it on.

The disk had not (of course) been properly backed up. The program files were saved. But then, the registry was deleted, so most don't work. The 'My Documents' folder was saved. But not the 'Application Data' or 'Local Settings' folders. So I lost 3 years of emails. The 'Install Sandra 2005' folder was saved, but not the 'Photos' folder. We lost about 200 photos from the last year. No point crying about it but it happened almost as I predicted it. Never mind.

The motherboard and processor seem to be working fine, though I don't use RAID or a couple of the other features so I can't comment on them.

Then the next challenge. Halfway through the computer's absence, something happened to the wireless adsl router and we lost internet connectivity on our laptop. I'm pretty sure we changed nothing, and ya.com are sure that our line is ok, so now I have to take a finetoothed comb through the net settings and find out what's wrong. Further success in this direction will be announced by a 'woo hoo' post on this site.

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March 21, 2005 | Filed Under General 

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