{"id":1472,"date":"2007-03-19T11:25:15","date_gmt":"2007-03-19T15:25:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cleek.lunarpages.com\/blogs\/?p=1472"},"modified":"2007-03-19T11:25:15","modified_gmt":"2007-03-19T15:25:15","slug":"what-i-did-this-weekend-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/?p=1472","title":{"rendered":"What I did this weekend"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

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.<\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

Went to Circuit City, got a 260G<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Old PC is still ZIPping the D drive.<\/p>\n

Went back to Circuit City for a standard SATA cable. Don't have any.
\nWent to Office Depot for a standard SATA cable. Don't have any.
\nWent to Best Buy for an SATA cable. They had one.<\/p>\n

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

Start to copy ZIP file from old PC to new PC. Copy takes 1 hour+. (33G ZIP)<\/p>\n

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<\/i> extracts the contents OK. This might be the year I actually buy <\/em>a copy of WinZIP, instead of clicking the \"Use Evaluation Button\" every time I use it.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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<\/a> 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<\/i> (Vista), because changing the RAID setting will wreck the contents of the drive. Swear a lot.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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<\/em>! Vista re-install proceeding happily. Dell guy says he'll send a new DVD drive. Yay.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

But, everything's looking good!<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1472"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1472\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}