I Feel So DIRTY

I have actually PAID for a Microsoft operating system. The shame.

Damn MS for finally implementing an effective method of forcing users to actually buy a legitimate copy for each machine.

This is not the first copy I have owned legitimately, just the first one I've had to buy. I have two copies of Win98 and a copy of 98SE Upgrade that were given to me. The two laptops and The Boy's desktop all came with a form of XP. Pro on the laptops and Home on the Compaq.

As soon as the VA check gets here, I will be getting a new 250gig SATA hard drive, installing my motherboard, and installing Windows XP Home. I would have preferred Pro, but it's $129 for OEM at NewEgg. The XP Home Upgrade Retail was normally $100, but Best Buy had it on sale for $50. Retail is better than OEM if you want to make radical changes to your hardware without buying the OS again. The pirated copy of XP I am running is Pro, and I am not using the features that differentiates Pro from Home, so why spend the extra funds?

My upgrade is moving right along. My old motherboard's AGP slot is 2x/4x. My favorite flight sim has developed a stutter. So, I figured it was time to upgrade to a motherboard with a 4x/8x AGP slot. So, I bought the board. Little did I know that changing things like the motherboard, cpu or the boot hard drive caused XP to bail. Since MS has instituted some changes to make pirated copies hard to install fresh, I figured I should get legal.

Upgrade stage one:

1. Replaced PNY GeForce FX 5200 (128mb) video card with PNY GeForce 6200 (128mb). Dead fan on the 5200. Might be fixable, but I can't find a fan that will work for less than the price of the new card.

2. Replaced the 350w power supply with a 450w with dual fans. Improved air flow got a 5^C drop in CPU temp!

3. Added two 80mm case fans, one in front, one in back. Got another 7^C drop in CPU temp.

4. Delete 512 PC2100 RAM stick and replace with 1024 PC3200, joining the other PC3200 512 (I had upgrade in sight even a year ago).

5. Disable onboard Realtek AC97 and install Sound Blaster Audigy SE.

6. New Motherboard, going from a 266MHz FSB to 400, going from 4x AGP to 8x, change from 4 IDE to 2 SATA (with RAID onboard) and 4 IDE get two more USB 2.0 slots, change from PCI to Onboard LAN (may stay with the PCI for speed reasons), change from PC2100 to PC3200 RAM.

7. Add a SATA 250gig hard drive.

8. Add a dual layer DVD burner.

9. Add a second SATA 250gig hard drive and activate the RAID 1. Constant back-up!

10. Delete 80gig IDE hard drive and put it in the iMac.

Upgrade stage two:

1. New motherboard (again). Change from Socket A (462) to Socket 939. Change from 2x184 pin PC3200 slots (2gig max) to 4x184 pin PC3200 slots (4gig max).

2. New CPU. Right now that is an AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Venice (2.0 GHz) to supplant my AMD Athlon XP 2200+ (1.8 GHz). While 1.8 to 2.0 doesn't seem like a huge increase, the changes in bus speed and going from 32 to 64 bit cores are supposed to make it seem more like 4.0GHz by comparison.

3. (Optional) since this upgrade is longer term than Stage One, it might be a good idea to change to a PCIe 16x video card. There isn't a huge price difference between AGP 8x and PCIe 16x motherboards and PCIe 16x cards are about $150. But I just bought a video card, dammit!

4. 19" LCD monitor. BOO YAH!

One of the nice things about how I am doing this is I will have lots of left over parts. I am thinking that what I should do is get a case and make Bev a new machine. The Boy can have a better video card and maybe a better monitor. Or slap The Boy's processor (AMD Athlon XP 2400+) into the Stage 1 board and change to a desktop case and he gets a general upgrade. That might require another OS purchase though.

I do so love polishing cannon balls.