I am back in cyberspace

Hi All , been missing getting on here. Just had to take a moment to fill ya in.

After reading what some have to deal with right now, i really cannot complain my only issues have been computer ones.

Lost my whole machine. Spent my well intentioned shop weekend working feverishly to get my computer world back in order.

Hooray for backups, but they simply are not good enough. Got all my data, but when you have to reload an operating system and sort out all the low level drivers etc and do those persky updates ....oh boy it took me three days and long long hours.

My computer aint anything special at all but with the manhours i have invested in it now its worth more than its weight in gold.

Last time this happened i was going to have nothing to do with it and took it to the local computer guy. Thing is this was Easter weekend. My business lives or dies buy the puter. Besides there was a couple of low level chipset drivers he never managed to sort out and i now can understand why.

Should have just gone out and bought a new one but i could not bring myself to do that when all it is was software.

For those of you ever doing home builds etc which btw my machine is not, but my new one i am planning will be, it pays to stick with some of the big brand names for motherboards and chips.

After my trials and tribulations (which are trivial compared to what others are dealing with) I found this very handy application on Intels site which i wanted to share with you all. It helped me tremendously if you have the patience to fiddle with the low level stuff and get it sorted once and for all.

http://www.intel.com/p/en_US/support/detect/

Also had to finally get the network sorted out at home so everyone can share my printer. Linking up an XP, Vista and Win 7 machine on the same workgroup can get a little challenging when you getting gray

I can fully understand the Mac club. Those things just work.


Ok now its on to taxes...we close our filing date by 30April.

Some day my shop will see me again and i will once again get to smell some wood shavings..

I apologize profusely to the swap box group for not having yet met my commitment. Time seems to be flying by way too fast.

Soon life will hopefully return to normality whatever that is.

Glad to have you back Rob!!!

Yep, reloading can be a lot of fun... I was supposed to be in a beta group at work to upgrade my work computer to win 7, but I've got too much non-standard software loaded (required for my job, but not standard for the company) in order to do it. It would take me days of downloading software installing, etc... Just not worth it...

I read your post on my company supplied Dell... but was thinking... I'm so glad my iMac won't be quite so problematic.

Yeah, having just about completed a new build, I know the frustration you were going through. I still can't get an external USB card reader to work. Didn't think a USB device would have problems, but this one is biting me.
I didn't pull up the Intel link, but they do have some very good help on what is compatible, although some of the information is not complete ie: some brands and models not included in the study for compatibility. It seems that there are so many types of memory available now, and not all of the DDR3s are compatible with all motherboards that require DDR3 memory. Way too many variations, so it gets very confusing.
Glad you got it back up and running. Nothing like working under the gun! Jim.

Welcome back Rob!

With the prices of computers being so cheap compared to what they once were, I've gotten where I don't mess with hardware too much anymore. I just go buy a complete system and replace it. Being that I make a living on the computer I see it as a tool, much like my dad as a carpenter and his tools, needs to be replaced to keep up with needs of my job.

I haven't had a need for the Carbonite yet, but have it installed on both my wife and my machines as well as some disc backups for the really important files.

As for software compatibility, I usually run Virtual Box with the OS the software needs as well as for testing new software that I'm not sure I'll use that much. Basically I setup the virtual machine with the new OS and get it configured, then make a backup of the disk image for safe keeping. If something goes wrong on the Virtual machine, I delete the disk image and make a new copy of the backup for a fresh start.