commented out

All right, so I’m actually a bit late with this post since I really finished the upgrade two weeks ago or so. I haven’t done any work on this machine for about two years, so I felt it was about time. I picked up an Asus P4P800-E Deluxe motherboard and a 3.2ghz Pentium 4. Naturally, something just has to go wrong whenever I work on my computer, and it only happens to this machine.

First, I had a problem installing Windows 2000. The setup just could not copy files properly. Thankfully, I have the laptop sitting next to me and a wireless router on my DSL connection, so after a little research I found out that it was likely a memory problem. I popped out one of the sticks of RAM and Windows installed fine. Great, I thought, we’re doing all right now. Wrong. Reinstalling that stick of RAM caused Windows to blue screen during startup. I haven’t seen a blue screen of death in several years, and now here it was, coming back to haunt me. Solution: I had only bought one 512 stick of PC3200 as I already had one. Both were Mushkin, but the one I bought was apparently a slightly new build, and dual-channel boards really like two identical sticks. Buying another stick has since remedied the problem.

Just when I thought all was well, the graphics problems started. Windows would load, the mouse cursor would turn strange colors and only move horizontally. Moments later the machine would lock and require a hard reset. Apparently the fan on my video card was shot and it was overheating. Screw it, I figured. I’ve come this far, so let’s just top it all off with a Radeon X800XT. Everything runs so beautifully now. Half-Life 2, Doom 3, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines; they all run flawlessly. Morrowind now runs like I believe it was intended, with almost negligible load times.

So very nice.