Finally got the new PC (time from order to first delivery attempt: less than 48 hours. time till I actually got the thing in my hands: 9 days).

As I usually do, when I get a new PC, I tried to move the D drive (my 'data' drive) from my current PC into the new one. But, I discovered that the new one is all SATA, no IDE connections available. Total crap.

So, I started to ZIP the contents of my D drive , because it would take years to copy 100,000+ files over the network. While it was ZIPping, I went to Office Depot to get a new SATA drive. They only had 120G drives. I wanted something like 300G.

Went to Circuit City, got a 260G

Took it home, tried to install it. But the drive came with some retarded non-standard SATA cable that blocked the SATA power connector - it requires you to use an IDE-style power connector, which my PC doesn't have any of.

Old PC is still ZIPping the D drive.

Went back to Circuit City for a standard SATA cable. Don't have any.
Went to Office Depot for a standard SATA cable. Don't have any.
Went to Best Buy for an SATA cable. They had one.

Back home, installed new drive. Fight with BIOS/disk management, get it formatted, assigned the right letter, etc.. All set. ZIP finishes.

Start to copy ZIP file from old PC to new PC. Copy takes 1 hour+. (33G ZIP)

Try to unZIP the file. Vista fails multiple times to extract the whole thing, but doesn't give any warnings, it just doesn't extract everything - like, 3/4 of the contents are missing. Download and install WinZIP. That extracts the contents OK. This might be the year I actually buy a copy of WinZIP, instead of clicking the "Use Evaluation Button" every time I use it.

Start installing all the stuff I need... Notice the new PC will freeze every now and then, for 15 or 20 seconds, then start back like nothing at all happened. At first, I assume it's just busy doing something behind the scenes - I'm giving it a good workout, installing all this crap, after all. But after a couple of hours of this, I decide to investigate.

After much searching and event log browsing, I figure out that the iaStor.sys driver (Intel's RAID/HD driver) is timing out every so often. Find out this is a very common problem with new Dell systems, which ship configured for RAID-0, even on single drive systems. Find out the way to fix it is to disable RAID in the BIOS and then reinstall the Operating System (Vista), because changing the RAID setting will wreck the contents of the drive. Swear a lot.

Finally bite the bullet and decide to reinstall Vista. Disconnect new D drive, just in case. Disable RAID in the BIOS. Try to start up, just to see what happens - Vista bootloader tries to start, discovers it has no OS, fails. It tries to repair Vista, and fails. That's expected.

Drop the Vista DVD in the DVD reader, reboot. Nothing happens. Fight with BIOS/boot sequence for an hour. No luck. So now the PC has no OS (old Vista installation is hosed by the failed 'repair' process) and I can't get it to boot the OS DVD. As far as I can tell, it's completely dead.

Call Dell tech support. Spend an hour on the phone, flipping through BIOS screens, Dell's self-test screens, etc.. no luck. Finally figure out that the DVD reader can't read the Vista DVD. It can read other CDs/DVDs, however. Dell tech tells me to run a full diagnostic on the computer - that will take 20 minutes so he says he'll call back in 30 minutes.

Test finishes in 10 minutes. Dell guy calls back 60 minutes later (of course). While waiting, I've copied the Vista DVD on my old PC to a DVD+R - just as a test. While taking to him, I pop the copied Vista DVD into the new PC and... it works fine! Vista re-install proceeding happily. Dell guy says he'll send a new DVD drive. Yay.

Install Visual C++ v6. Can't find the MSDN CDs, so there will be no Help unless I can find a kind soul willing to loan me their MSDN CDs for a couple minutes.... Try to install the VC6 Service Pack #5 (need it for certain things we sell). The install fails due to version issues with MDAC (a database thingy) - hack the installer to remove MDAC dependencies. Not liking Vista so far. Install a bunch of other stuff. Install iTunes, point it at the network storage box, where all the music lives in our house. It spends an hour chugging through the songs, building a playlist.

But, everything's looking good!

This AM, start the old PC, because the new one's not done yet. Sync my iPod. iTunes says it can't sync completely because 100+ songs were missing. Discover that iTunes on the new PC had rearranged a bunch of folders on the NAS for no reason. Swear for 20 minutes. Show up late to work, hating computers.