uruloki’s lair

We’ll start about a week and a half ago. The Compaq is in the shop, getting the small problem of running at a very high temperature fixed. I already knew that Otter needed it off to her ASAP, so that meant I was free to get a new computer. I decided on a 17” Toshiba from BestBuy (gotta love those Reward Zone points!!), which is where the saga really begins.

The next night, without having used it yet, I start the upgrade to XP Pro. I’ll be honest, I wasn’t very smart about the setup process. The first run of setup (hmmm, foreshadowing?), I selected the entire hard drive as a partition and a full (vs quick) NTFS partition. Doing a full format on 80GB takes more than two and a half hours, which is a long time to be sitting at your friend’s house with everyone asking about progress. Oh yeah, and they are all either CompSci dorks or CompEngr geeks. When they figured out what I was doing, that’s when they told me some of what I should be doing. Of course, it was only part since I never ask questions and they assumed I know the principles.

Basically, what I should have done is create of about 10GB, which would serve as the system drive. Then, do a quick (full on the third time through :)) NTFS format on that partition, which reduces the time for a Windows install from three plus hours to 45 minutes. The first time you log in, partition the remainder of the hard drive into two (guess who did one?) drives: one for programs, and one for data such as user profiles. The data partition should be about 2/3 of the hard drive, with the programs drive taking the remainder. Even with only doing two partitions, the end result was good and it stayed that way for a couple of days. (Current Install Score: 2)

Then the Compaq came home. Since I want Otter to not have to worry about the computer (which would probably be easier if I quit fuckin’ with it in the first place), I wanted to do the same thing, but right. So, I figured that I might as well fix the Toshiba’s installation at the same time. The initial installs went perfectly, and everything was set up correctly, when I put the next phase into operation. Basically, there’s no point in having a separate data partition when I’m leaving the user profiles on the system drive. So, it’s time to edit the registry (usually not a good idea for me, but I had easy directions). Fortunately, it all works out, and the profiles are now on the data drive. Also, the default installation directory points to the Program partition. (Current Install Score:4)

Then I installed Office. At this point, Windows stops working with the CD drives. On both computers. Two different installs of XP (one with SP1, other without), two different Offices (XP on Compaq, 2003 on Toshiba), and two completely different hardware setups. The drives would do Autorun, and I could do command line copies of data, but it wouldn’t explore the discs in any way shape or form. Grrrrr. I used data discs that were written on those drives, and they absolutely refused to open in Windows.

So, time to experiment. I decided on the Toshiba since it’s mine. Reinstall, leave the CD drive as D: this time and have the new partitions as E and F. Do the profile mod. Do the default installation mod. Now, a new problem crops up. As I’m installing the drivers, problems start appearing. It’s trying to make “F:\” which already freakin’ exists. I can work around it, but that’s not a solution since the precondition for success is Otter not worrying about special stuff to do. Time for another install. (Current Install Score:

This time everything works perfectly, I’m pretty sure because I didn’t mod the default install directory. So, I go to start up the Compaq and make sure it’s ready for install number 9, but not without testing the CD drive again. It works. ^%#$%$#$% Didn’t change anything, and the stupid thing works. Completely. Installed everything and it’s ready to ship and the STUPID THING FIXED ITSELF. Boy I feel useful.

I’ve installed Windows at a greater than one install per day for the last week, and 90% of them turned out to be worthless. I hate this.

Tags: Technology //