Hopefully brief, that is.

Over the weekend, I was visited by some wild hare and decided I really needed to upgrade my computer. Now… my computer has been my faithful companion for three years, and there wasn’t anything wrong with it at all. But it was getting a little long in the tooth and struggling with a few newer programs I’d loaded. It was a little noisy, too, being built before quiet PCs were a good thing. Sometimes I could fancy that the fan noise almost sounded like it was breathing.

In reality it was probably gasping for breath. (Note to self: Blow the dust out occasionally, eh?)

So I decided to upgrade. With a PC of this age, that pretty much means new everything. New CPU, new motherboard, new drives, new video card, etc. I saved my sound card, my CD drive, my floppy drive, an old zip drive and a card reader. And my printer and monitor, of course. And my operating system (Win XP).

After a little research, I ran up to PC Club, where they just happened to have the exact parts I wanted. It was like fate, I tell you.

Note: I’ve done this before. I’m usually fairly successful. The things just plug together. It’s like Legos, sort of.

I got started after dinner Saturday night putting it all together. I had the old computer torn apart and the new one almost ready for a test firing when I realized that I needed a new power supply. Then I remembered that the one in #1 Son’s computer would work. So I pulled the power supply from his, put it in mine, hooked it all up, plugged it in, turned it on, and copied the old disk over to the new disk.

I knew I would have to do a repair install of XP, which I did. But then it would boot as far as the welcome screen, and then reboot, and then go as far as the welcome screen, and then reboot… lather, rinse, repeat. I didn’t know what to do. And, if you are keeping track, you will note that #1 Son’s computer wasn’t working either now, so I had no way to look it up on the internet and see what a fix might be. So I decided to reinstall Win XP from scratch, which meant all of my software, while still there on my disk, needs to be reinstalled because Windows doesn’t know where or what it is.

Note to self: Leave one working computer at all costs.

I should have just gone to bed. In the wee hours of the morning, I fried my old drive, thus rendering any kind of reinstall of the old system impossible. And I melted (yes…. melted… very exciting!) my floppy drive and probably fried my zip drive as well.

I now have two working computers, but I’m still trying to recover software. So you will excuse me because I haven’t written, I haven’t read any blogs. I’ve done a little knitting, but I can’t show you pictures because my PC still won’t talk to my camera. It’s an interesting time over hear at chez PI, gentle reader.

So far I have a nice, new, very fast, very efficient, very quiet….

doorstop.