The weekend has passed and I actually performed the task which I most desired. I purchased and attempted to install a 160 GB Serial ATA Hard Drive. The item in question is actually an SATA 2 drive, but the store clerk assured me that they were retro-compatible. Since this was a local computer hardware store and not a big box retailer that shall remain nameless and sucky, I took him at his word. After fucking around with 4 attempts to
That would have been a nice gift and would have continued the tradition I started two Wars ago, when I gave him the entire computer from which this drive originated. At the time, the computer was 3 years old and 1 GHz and the fastest computer my father had ever owned. It now runs Linux and he is really happy with it. Last year, in honor of the Grand Peoples' Liberal Army's continued breakthroughs in the War on Christmas, I gave my father a 1.2 or 1.4 GHz laptop, docking station and monitor. He was floored. I also paid him back some money I owed him and it was like I had told him that I was giving up computer games for engineering school or something. Anyway, my mother was not exactly pleased with the gifts of that year, but she has since come around due to functionality of the laptop. (It actually works and can be used to send and receive email, which is something new for my parents.)
But I digress yet again, I installed the new drive semi-properly and hooked up the power and information cables. These cables are only able to be hooked up in the proper manner, so I know I did that right. I used a can of air to blow out all the dust from the heat sink over the processor and then blew out the rest of the case.
I then turned on the computer and expected to see my standard load screen. Instead, I saw an unformatted HD screen and it told me to hit TAB to enter the BIOS. Well, I hit TAB and nothing happened. Then the computer told me to hit DEL to do something else and that didn't work either. I put my Windows XP Pro disc in the drive and then rebooted. Nothing different happened and the keyboard didn't work again. I then attached a Non-USB keyboard and rebooted. The keyboard commands were not recognized again. I decided that I would unplug the new drive from the motherboard and try to boot the computer to check to see if it still worked at all.The computer booted up really slowly and then behaved...erratically. I became extremely pissed and annoyed at myself. I figured that I had broken something while mucking about in the innards of my poor processor. Well, the problems I was having running any program at all since installing the drive were solved when I removed the Windows disc. So that is wonderful. I haven't broken anything yet, but the Windows disc sure does delay all functions of my computer.
Tonight, I am going to stick the Windows the disc in my drive, unplug my old IDE drives and then plug in my new drive and see what happens. I can't remember if the Windows disc will act as a boot disc, but I hope it will, because then I hope to install Windows and format the drive and then I will either set the IDE drives to slave status or get the computer running with the SATA drive as Master and then reboot and muck about in the BIOS and set the new drive as a Slave. Some might say that I am going about this in the extremely hard way. To them, I say that my Wang allows nothing less. Also, installing Windows isn't the problem, installing my download-only virus protection and firewall. I don't want to sit on hold with the virus protection people for three hours trying to get them to send me a disc with the software. This is an immaterial matter, some might say, since I already have to do that because the update I paid for and dowloaded does not work and my subscription does not seem to have worked either.
Oh, the plight of the genoius.
posted by Chuckles @ 7:19 AM
