OK. So how did things go overnight? Well, the VisualStudio software installed OK. I found a copy of the software that went with the number I had. Thanks to it being an MSDN Subscriber CD I did not even need to enter the number. So that worked out well. I realised I had placed a copy of the DVD on my home network so that allowed me to install the software.

Right now I am almost finished installing everything. There are some applications that need serial numbers, and some other small applications to be installed. But they pale into insignificance with the rest of this. I worked out that I installed about 5-8 GBytes of software with the exception of Windows. I am now moving stuff like my email, my documents, photos across. As I was writing that line, those finished. Now I am moving my Desktop across. All in all there is probably 15-20 GBytes of that type of stuff.

I am taking this oportunity to make a complete backup too, so anything being move across is being placed into a temp directory before being copied into its ultimate location. And everything in the temp directory will be backed up onto DVD…

I lost count of how many times Windows needed to reboot. Sure it is not as bad as Windows NT where I am sure I once saw a message “Windows had detected that your Mouse had moved and needs to reboot”, but I am sure it is close to that with all the other updates that need to be installed. XP and Office both need updates, and these often need reboots. XP Service Pack 2 definitely needed a big reboot. Right now so soon as some files copy I need to reboot the machine for a Windows Update.

Anyway that is enough from me for the moment…. More later