I will post another update later… I have been updating the church computer. I am replacing an old UNSW PC with one that a client of mine gave me after I upgraded the hardware for him. In this case the old PC is quite good enough for the church. It just was not good enough for an Elizabeth St Solicitor.

Anyway, I first needed a new HDD for the machine. I found a 13 GByte one lying in one cases here. So I use that. I have a copy of Windows 98 SE to install. I could install any Microsoft O/S on the PC… Given the age I decided to go for Windows 98 SE. Windows ME was not stable, and 2000 and XP are too resource hungry. Then came the problem. How to install it. The Windows98 came on a DVD, and as files. It was not a bootable CD. Microsoft for their newer stuff supply CD Rom images as well as the files. But I only had the files. I did have a bootable ME CD which I used which allowed me to run the setup from the CD I made of all the 98SE files.

This worked, but once I had it installed I ran out of memory. I checked. Only a 700MByte HDD. OOps. Boot ME again and fdisk to the 13 GBytes. Then format it, and install again. Then install microsoft’s patches. There were only 68 of them to install.

Oh, I forgot. No driver for the network card on the motherboard. Find a network card and plug it in and use it. Screen stuck in 640×480. Unusable. Can’t even work out what type of video card it has. So I found a program that told me it was a nVidea TNT. Install the driver. Reboot. I now have many other resolutions.

Oh… One of the two monitors here was making crackling noises and not working… Dust in the High Voltage area probably. Could not clean it… The monitor is 1998/1999 vintage so onto the rubbish heap.

So Install Norton Antivirus. Then move all the files from the old HDD to the new one. This is on the third go. Nortons was finding virii, and then refusing to copy more files. It is moving them now without NAV turned on. Installed Office. The computer is now almost usable. Time to give the owner a GMail account to go with the Hotmail account…

Music:

Icehouse with Sister… And Billy Joel with ‘Light as a breeze’…