Once again I am off to the seaside for some training.
This time it is Brighton and I am only there for 2 days and the training course is titled "The Meaning of Life"! I expect them to teach me to suck eggs (compulsory course), but it is two days away from my "real job"!
I am spending one night at The Grand, which some of you may remember from a certain incident in 1984.
Hopefully there is no-one controversial staying tomorrow night!
I can't claim that it worked first time, but after a Bios update, Windows finally recognised the fact that my motherboard had onboard sound and installed drivers for it.
I have installed all the essentials and even managed to install EQ2 and Crysis (the true essentials!).
EQ2 looks a bit better (it's an old game that can only be taken so far) but Crysis is playable (as opposed to a laggy slideshow) and looks gorgeous.
I'll try and work out some screenies.
Oh and the biggest success...
My new slipstreamed install disk for Windows XP.
My install disk is pre-SP1 and needs SATA drivers to be installed from a floppy drive (which the new PC doesn't have).
Using nLite, Nero and a lot of help from Paul Thurrott's excellent website, I made a Windows XP SP2 disk, which included the SATA drivers. Next time I'll try and incorporate all the MoBo drivers and make it unattended as well.
Serena's birthday present came today...
It's a new PC to replace her Athlon XP 2800, which we have had for nearly 6 years!
I always feel nervous when building and installing a new machine, and am hoping that the technology gods have been appeased by the offering of my older machine as a sacrifice!
Rather than build one we bought direct from CyberPower as their systems get excellent reviews and we cannot beat them on price either!
Anyway, as I write this the system is currently installing Windoze!
Fingers crossed.
My little repair shop man has tested everything that he can and has given me a two possibilities....
Either I have killed the processor - 80%
Or I have done something really odd to the Motherboard - 10%
Or Both - 10%
This means that my hopes that I had just blown the PSU are of no avail.
A replacement processor is about £25 on EBay, and the motherboard would make it a write-off and I don't think second hand ones are worth the hassle.
Budget will not allow me to spend £800-900 on a new system so I have to try the EBay route first.
OK, this one needs a bit of placement for my wider audience...
This is a fan-vid from EverQuest2 and relates to a special quest reward called Brell's Keg which summons beer. This quest is only available during the week around St Patrick's Day and Serena and I did it at the weekend.
Still fresh from the high of importing components from Germany to get my PC working again, I was investigating a loud fan noise this morning and I did something really stupid!
I won't go into specifics, but the end results was sparks and alarms (from the PC) and finally a PC that won't boot.
Serena is going to accuse me of sabotaging my PC so that I have to get a new one - I can tell!
Well my replacement video card finally arrived from Germany and the Dyson man repaired our vacuum cleaner for free, as it took him seconds and the cause of the loss of power was not our fault (his words).
I normally get a bit depressed at this time of year and always wrote it off to SAD and I was going to blog to say that thankfully this year I seemed to have been spared, but it looks now that Serena is really down.
I am certain this is down to living with two sick kids and having money pour between our fingers for a month, rather than anything seasonal, but still I hope Lauren being back at nursery and a bit more good luck will improve things!
If not I will need to buy more Green and Blacks chocolate!
