ScuzzBlog: Diaries November 2020
Entry 20th November 2020: Post 1: Windows XP - Happens.
Windows XP - Happens.
When you work with computers there is one thing you kinda dread
but know its always likely to happen. Today my XP machine fell
over. I suspected the hard drive and so I had to take the computer
to the bench and check her out. The hard drive had indeed collapsed
big time. I was getting a high pitch pinging click and she would
not boot .. no way.
I can trace my line of computers from my humble ZX81 all the way
up to this Win7 machine and beyond to the Win10 machine I have
sitting waiting in the wings to my right. They all are still
working and I maintain them that way. If one falls over I fix it.
The XP era was a short one, just 3 years in truth from around
April 2008 to February 2011. It was not a happy experience, other
than for my time playing World of Warcraft. I always found XP to
be an unnecessarily over-bloated and complex OS. Endless menus
and side menus and convoluted ways to do... well anything. Win7
is burdened with the same nonsense, however with Win7 it kinda
gets round a lot more by doing stuff automatically for you.
And so what to do. I still had the other drive on the machine
but would it hold a fresh install. I tried some other drives but
the computer was not playing ball. So I dragged out my Evesham
Windows XP Professional recovery disk and went for it.
Took about an hour in all and without any real input from me the
computer reinstalled XP on the second drive and configured
everything without me having to do a thing. What is incredible
is that it left all the data on the drive, albeit I have just 4GB
left to play with. Because this computer had the version of XP as
part of the operating system when new it somehow knew I had already
activated Windows and so checking the activate software [.exe]
thro the RUN command it advised me I was already active. That was
the only thing that troubled me what with XP no longer being
supported.
Next up locked in another drive as a back-up. Installed my Thumbs
file management software and set up the home network.
Anyhoo... She's alive and running just fine. I lost a hard drive
but as ever I have a number of full copies of the whole drive. All
my software for the many PCs that I own is in individually marked
boxes and so when I get a problem I can quickly track down the CDs
etc. I also keep various notes in the boxes of the way I installed
various cards and drives. Seems to work.
And so that was all I did today. As I inserted the last screw into
the case and pressed the start button to that welcome XP screen I
was again complete and the timeline is still intact.
Just the one picture today. Happy days.
PS It's not her fault she's a Windows machine. They are all special
to me. Even tin boxes running MS stuff.
Windows XP - Happens.
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