- Joined
- Apr 25, 2003
- Messages
- 1,301
- Reaction score
- 62
- Points
- 48
- Location
- The home of the free and the land that did for Bra
- Your Mac's Specs
- 24"iMac, 15"MB-Pro, MacBook, G4 iMac, PM G5 2x2Ghz, G4 iBook & Some PCs
Firstly, I'm a PC builder, have been for many years, but not big time. i.e I usually only do it to order for friends and family (apart from a brief dalliance with mobile, car and boat, computers).
Secondly, my personal choice of OS is OS X follower by Ubuntu as a close second. My MacBook has dual boot OSX and XP (using the BootCamp Beta) AND Parallels with XP and two Linux Distros installed, so I do know a thing or two about installing OSs.
Today as a favour to a friend I offered to upgrade their PC to the 21st century, so one new motherboard (a 939 AMD mini ATX card), one new PSU and some RAM I had knocking around later I was ready to install a version of Windoze. It just so happened that the already installed XP-Pro OS was of dubious origin (a "friend" of hers had installed it some time ago, no discs, no activation code etc) and the activation code sticky (for XP-Home version) on the machine was useless as there was no OS Install disc for it.
Obviously the existing OS did not like the new motherboard (wouldn't even boot into safe mode) so I, stupidly as it turned out, decided to install Vista for her, a brand spanking new OEM version labelled "Home-Premium". They even throw in a plastic DVD case for it which is a first for MS OEM OSs.
It flatly refuses to install and as I was already aware that it can be a little finicky about hardware I tried everything, 4 different hard drives, several differnt video cards, even different RAM sticks, all to no avail.
Rather frustrated that I couldn't get the thing to install (after all in the last 25 years I've never actually failed completely to install an MS OS) I decided to visit the "Vista install problems" forum, it is currently 245 pages long, not a single thread of 245 pages mind you, that is 245 pages of threads!
No help there either, currently I'm trying the install XP first then Vista on top approach, I'll let you know how I get on.
God how I hate PCs!
Amen-Moses
Secondly, my personal choice of OS is OS X follower by Ubuntu as a close second. My MacBook has dual boot OSX and XP (using the BootCamp Beta) AND Parallels with XP and two Linux Distros installed, so I do know a thing or two about installing OSs.
Today as a favour to a friend I offered to upgrade their PC to the 21st century, so one new motherboard (a 939 AMD mini ATX card), one new PSU and some RAM I had knocking around later I was ready to install a version of Windoze. It just so happened that the already installed XP-Pro OS was of dubious origin (a "friend" of hers had installed it some time ago, no discs, no activation code etc) and the activation code sticky (for XP-Home version) on the machine was useless as there was no OS Install disc for it.
Obviously the existing OS did not like the new motherboard (wouldn't even boot into safe mode) so I, stupidly as it turned out, decided to install Vista for her, a brand spanking new OEM version labelled "Home-Premium". They even throw in a plastic DVD case for it which is a first for MS OEM OSs.
It flatly refuses to install and as I was already aware that it can be a little finicky about hardware I tried everything, 4 different hard drives, several differnt video cards, even different RAM sticks, all to no avail.
Rather frustrated that I couldn't get the thing to install (after all in the last 25 years I've never actually failed completely to install an MS OS) I decided to visit the "Vista install problems" forum, it is currently 245 pages long, not a single thread of 245 pages mind you, that is 245 pages of threads!
No help there either, currently I'm trying the install XP first then Vista on top approach, I'll let you know how I get on.
God how I hate PCs!
Amen-Moses