mikefisher.org

The past two weeks I have about had it up to my nose with computer work. First I decided to upgrade my $400 Wal-Mart Compaq, about three years old. There was some sort of motherboard trouble that caused it to hang whenever rebooting. After enduring that for a while I thought I had a good enough excuse to upgrade.

So I went with a new motherboard, CPU, and RAM from NewEgg.com. The motherboard was about the cheapest available that worked with an Intel Core 2 Duo. I figured 2GB of RAM and the Core 2 Duo should get me very nice performance for about $250. Well it would have if the brand new motherboard had not had defective PS/2 and USB ports. So we tried out NewEgg’s return merchandise thing and ordered a better motherboard.

So I get the new motherboard and install it with the new CPU, fan, and RAM. I reinstalled Windows on top of the old installation. Everything works except for the sound. I reinstalled the sound drivers and still no sound. I figured there was a driver conflict and tried to make sure there were no other sound drivers installed. No luck. I formatted the hard drive and reinstalled Windows again. Reinstall the motherboard drivers. No sound. Reinstall the sound drivers. (Restarts after each install.) Nothing. Then I discovered that, after reinstalling the sound drivers, the sound worked until restarting, when it quit for no reason. So it being Saturday I have to content myself with no sound until I can call motherboard mfg. tech support next week. I still think it is a driver conflict issue but have no idea what it could be.

Another problem I had with both motherboards is that there is only one IDE connector. I guess SATA is the way to go these days, but it creates a real problem when you want to connect two existing CD drives and a hard drive to one IDE connector. So right now I am using an external CD drive which is really dumb when there are two internal drives that I can’t use because there aren’t enough connectors. Next time I get an order from NewEgg I will have to see if there is any solution for the problem.

These issues aside, I really, really like the new setup. I am even hoping to try Windows Vista on it when I get my free copy from Microsoft.

Then today I got in the mail the new screen I got off eBay for a laptop that belongs to my brother. He accidentally stepped on it soon after he bought it several years ago, shattering the LCD screen. He has since bought another one and since this was lying around I decided to see if I could fix it. Most replacement screens I priced were around $250-400. Not worth it. This week I found one on eBay for $155. I bought it and installed it this evening. It was the easiest thing I have fixed on a computer in the last couple of weeks. The same model of laptop is still selling on Amazon for around $380 so it would definitely not have made sense to spend much more on it.

I am tired of working on computers.