Computer Woes

I've been quiet since our computer became possessed. As it turned out, the hard drive was in a spot of bother. A few months ago, it could no longer find either network card (and still couldn't as of its demise). The cards were invisible to the computer. I ended up using a spare USB network connection, but I hated that inelegant solution out of principle. About a month ago, the computer could no longer find the Windows registration file. Microsoft saw fit to make sure the computer wouldn't even boot up if the file was corrupt, so I had to speak with someone in India to restore the license. Of course, when I call back to re-enter it, they will probably send the black helicopters after me- or worse yet, they won't authorize the installation. I didn't even want to mess with it, so I am on my 30-day "trial" while I work out any potential bugs.

Installing the new hard drive solved all my woes. The trouble is, I had a huge amount of digital audio software, and it will be a huge pain in the ass to reauthorize all the crazy copy protection schemes. I've already lost an expensive plug-in that used hard disk authorization. All the challenge and response protection seems to be hardware dependent. I will need to search for all the serial numbers, licenses, and dongles. It will take hours.

This isn't the first time this has happened. I had originally used a high performance IBM hard drive that later became notorious for "the click of death." This happened at the exact same time the motherboard gave out. I was extremely busy at the time, and didn't want to deal with the hassle, so I took it to the Geek Squad and asked them to check the mobo and HD, since I suspected both- the PC wouldn't even post (which it should do even if the HD was bad). They told me the HD was bad and charged my something like $60 just to tell me that. I doubt there is a PC problem that I can't fix, and while at times, time is money, I will never go back to Geek Squad or pay anyone else to touch my computer. Of course that time, my replacing the drive didn't fix the problem, since the mobo was still bad. I didn't want to replace the board if it was working. Anyway, since I was one of three people in the entire universe that bought into RAMBUS when it came out, I had to order a mobo from Taiwan through ebay if I still wanted to use my memory. I found a hell of a deal, but they sent it by donkey- it took forever to arrive. Oddly, they shipped it in the original retail box that they had turned inside out.

My fear when the PC couldn't find the network card in recent weeks was that the mobo had gone out again. The blue screens of death could have pointed to bad memory. I wouldn't even know where to find RAMBUS these days, so I'd probably need a new board and processor as well. Regardless, the HD solved everything, although I have a minimum of software reinstalled. Fortunately, all the data was backed up elsewhere.

Finding a hard drive was a bit of an annoyance. Best Buy had 100 gig drives on sale for $49, so I stopped at the store down the street. Of course they were all out, but they had a 120 gig drive for just $10 more- I assumed the usual bait and switch. When I arrived home, I realized that I must have been living in a cave, because this new drive was not a regular Ultra ATA drive, but rather a Serial ATA- that requires a completely different cable/mobo connection. I returned it and located what I needed at another store. I've given up on high end drives. In the end, they are all crap, and they don't make them like they used to.