| WinXP Pro, redux |
[Jan. 8th, 2005|02:22 pm] |
Being the stubborn sort, I managed to get Windows XP Pro installed today. Solution? I installed Windows 98 first (yes, I still have my disk), disabled the card reader PCI device via the control panel, then did an update to Win XP Pro. There were two drawbacks to doing this.
First, I had to wipe out the Linux partition since Windows 98 insists on formatting the entire drive. I wasn't too upset about this, however, in part because I thought the dual boot setup might somehow be related to the problems I was having. Besides, it sucked. I don't know what I did wrong with that particular installation of Linux, but it never worked quite right. Meh. I can always reinstall it.
Second, it's FAT32. I want NTFS. I need to figure out if there's a way to reinstall this puppy as NTFS without starting from scratch. Maybe I'll just do what Jason suggests - unplug the damned thing, install Windows and then plug it back in. But not today.
Oh, and one final note. I had the NVIDIA driver patch for Win2k/XP handy on my thumb drive. It's a good thing, too, because even XP Pro SP 2 doesn't recognize the NVIDIA ethernet controller builtin to the motherboard.
Well, anyway, I've got everything patched up now and it seems to be running slick. |
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| WinXP Pro, Final |
[Jan. 8th, 2005|11:27 pm] |
Ok, I lied. I couldn't let it alone, so I decided to try something new. One thing I noticed during the last install was that it wasn't recognizing the DVD/CD R+W, at least not until I installed the NVIDIA driver update. This is the same drive I was booting from. Whoops. So, I changed the BIOS settings to boot from the regular CD-ROM instead. Guess what? Everything worked perfectly.
That is, until I installed the latest driver for my Syncmaster 712n LCD from windowsupdate.com. That royally hosed up the display so that I couldn't get anything but 640x480 at 4 bit. Attempts to rollback failed. So, I had to reinstall - again. Ugh. For future reference don't do that. :)
Well, I've got everything back to good working order and with NTFS to boot. I didn't realize XP had better technology for LCD's (called ClearTech or something) - there's a noticable improvement in the visual quality from Win2k. It's very sharp - nice.
Verdict so far - thumbs up. |
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