The past few days

[shadowinthelight]

I'm back now after my online activity was limited this past week. My parents computer died suddenly last week which finally forced my hand into me building myself a new system so I could reuse my old parts to rebuild theirs. I might have gone a tad overboard with an Intel i7 4770k CPU, MSI Z87-G43 mobo, 16GB G.Skill DDR3 2666 RAM, Zalman CNPS9900ALED CPU cooler, Thermaltake SOPRANO VO900M1N2N case, Fractal Design 600W power supply, 2TB Western Digital green HDD, LG BH16NS40 Blu-ray burner, and Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit. I was able to reuse my not so old GeForce GTX 560 Ti video card and a couple of other hard drives.

Luckily I held on to a custom bootable DOS flash drive (yes, DOS is still useful (at least when you have a utility like NTFSDOS (which I do))) I made at my old job and was able to use Ghost to make a backup after the getting everything installed and configured which was a pain in the ass with the Nvidia drivers had to making the process as painful as possible. It took stealing the nView installer out of the Quadro driver pack, using a patching program so it would install, and then a registry hack to make it actually start when it's supposed to. Did I mention this was a pain in the ass?

The hilarious thing about all this is the new system is quieter with both side panels off than my old box completely closed up. Now I'm going to be able to inflict my rescripts and other bad humor on you guys at ludicrous speed.

[Julie]

In the immortal words of Pumpkin Escobar (aka Tracy Morgan's character in Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back)...Man... I don't know what the FUCK you just said, Little Kid, but you're special man, you reached out, and you touch a brother's heart.

Yeah...I don't speak computer...but I'm definitely jealous of anyone who has a new set-up. My computer is 6 or 7 years old now and has trouble running (which is part of the reason I only get online from work anymore). Maybe once my husband finds a job (*fingers crossed*) we can look into building me a new one...though I seriously doubt it will be anywhere near as epic as yours. Then again, I only use my computer to play simple games (downloadable or web-based), write, and download music.

In any event, I look forward to more hilarity from you!

[MerchManDan]

I also just barely understood those stats, but I'm pretty impressed* with what I did glean. LUDICROUS SPEED - GO!!!

As it happens, a married couple I know also saw their desktop die a horrible death recently so they've been looking for a new one (just a prefab unit from Future Shop). Their old one was running Windows XP, which apparently self-destructed after an automatic update; did that happen to your parents, shadow?


*jealous

[shadowinthelight]

If it was just XP that I could have reinstalled it in a day. Their motherboard (my old Abit NF7-S with an Athlon XP CPU) suddenly fell ill with the keyboard controller failing at random. A week later when I was able to look at it I turned it on, saw it fail, and turned it off. That is when the patient expired so when I tried to turn it back on it would no longer boot.

[DinkyInky]

I'm back now after my online activity was limited this past week. My parents computer died suddenly last week which finally forced my hand into me building myself a new system so I could reuse my old parts to rebuild theirs. I might have gone a tad overboard with an Intel i7 4770k CPU, MSI Z87-G43 mobo, 16GB G.Skill DDR3 2666 RAM, Zalman CNPS9900ALED CPU cooler, Thermaltake SOPRANO VO900M1N2N case, Fractal Design 600W power supply, 2TB Western Digital green HDD, LG BH16NS40 Blu-ray burner, and Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit. I was able to reuse my not so old GeForce GTX 560 Ti video card and a couple of other hard drives.

Luckily I held on to a custom bootable DOS flash drive (yes, DOS is still useful (at least when you have a utility like NTFSDOS (which I do))) I made at my old job and was able to use Ghost to make a backup after the getting everything installed and configured which was a pain in the ass with the Nvidia drivers had to making the process as painful as possible. It took stealing the nView installer out of the Quadro driver pack, using a patching program so it would install, and then a registry hack to make it actually start when it's supposed to. Did I mention this was a pain in the ass?

The hilarious thing about all this is the new system is quieter with both side panels off than my old box completely closed up. Now I'm going to be able to inflict my rescripts and other bad humor on you guys at ludicrous speed.

I was with you until the WD HDD. I've had 10 out of 10 of those drives go belly up within a month of building the machines. When I switched to Seagate, I had 1 out of 10 go bad, so I'm kinda prejudiced there. I've been hacked many times by jerks(and my setups were secured by reputable folks) with Windows, so I've gone Penguin for most of my stuff(I have an offline machine of windows for the few programs that won't run in Mint). Once I can figure out how to get my Graphire BT tablet to play nice with Mint, I'll give you some fun doodles to deconstruct, deal?

So far Wine and CrossOver has been less than successful in getting my system back together. Grats on the fat loot.

[MerchManDan]

If it was just XP that I could have reinstalled it in a day.

Well, that's what I figured, but since Microsoft will soon stop updating XP, my buddy thinks Microsoft hid a kill-code or something in the latest Service Pack to force people into buying new computers. Paranoid, I know, but that's the kind of guy he is.

[shadowinthelight]

I've had 10 out of 10 of those drives go belly up within a month of building the machines.

That's some mighty sucky bad luck. It seems like there are people with such stories of every brand, though. I've used WD, Seagate, Maxtor and maybe others and haven't had any difference in luck. I've never held any brand loyalties and just go with individual product reviews.

The Linux Mint 15 Cinnamon live disk is what I was using but it turns out it doesn't support the network on my new motherboard so I couldn't get online with my own system.

Microsoft will soon stop updating XP

Yeah, that's why I'm going with 7 for both computers this time even though XP was still doing its job just fine. Actually, I'd still be using 2000 if it was supported.

[DinkyInky]

I've had 10 out of 10 of those drives go belly up within a month of building the machines.

That's some mighty sucky bad luck. It seems like there are people with such stories of every brand, though. I've used WD, Seagate, Maxtor and maybe others and haven't had any difference in luck. I've never held any brand loyalties and just go with individual product reviews.

The Linux Mint 15 Cinnamon live disk is what I was using but it turns out it doesn't support the network on my new motherboard so I couldn't get online with my own system.

I've been having not so good luck using wireless in Mint, but cabled is just fine. If you are using wireless, you're probably gonna have to get a USB wireless stick for it(I was using a Panda Wireless USB). Some of the wireless setups are not as good for Linux, and mileage may vary.

Using cabled currently, so I am not sure if these will work for you, but here you go.

[Atomic]

Yeah, that's why I'm going with 7 for both computers this time even though XP was still doing its job just fine. Actually, I'd still be using 2000 if it was supported.

Yeah to that! I recently updated one of my boxes from 2000 to XP just to keep it going smoothly. It's not Uber enough for Win7 (boo hiss bloat), but it does the job just fine, and my antivirus/firewall combo stopped supporting 2000. Oh well...