"Windows Sucks (Part 7)" by Troy H. Cheek on Jun 27, 2005

Actually, I don't know if this is part 7 or not, but it's certainly getting up there.

I decided a week or so ago to install a new motherboard, CPU, and RAM in my main computer. As long as I was doing this, I figured now would be a good time to reformat Drive C: and install a fresh copy of Windows 2000. It seemed like a good time for that.

You're always supposed to wipe the drive and install a fresh copy of Windows when you install a new motherboard. Windows does some pretty freaky stuff to kludge itself to run on each individual motherboard. Er, I mean, Windows optimizes itself for each individual motherboard. Putting in a new motherboard means that Windows installs even more stuff. Maybe it takes all the old stuff out. Maybe the old stuff sits deep within the system registry waiting for the right moment to strike out and delete all your data.

I'd been having some stability problems with my main computer for a while. I was getting very rare but undeniable crashes and reboots, especially when video editing or doing something else which required a lot of memory, CPU time, or disk access. Other times, I'd see a huge amount of disk thrashing for no particular reason. Obviously, Windows was becoming unstable. Probably nothing that a good registry cleaning and harddrive defragmentation wouldn't fix. But I'd been meaning to upgrade to a better processor for some time. And for that I'd need a better motherboard, as my current one was maxed out. And I'd been reading about DDR RAM and how much better it was than my current SD RAM...

I took several days seriously preparing for an intentional reformating of Drive C:, fresh installation of Windows, installation of all my favorite applications, and restoration of vital date. I emphasize intentional because I have completely lost count of how many times I've had to format or install or restore without previously intending to due to actions by myself, Windows, RNG, or God. This time I was going to make sure I had everything ready.

So, out with the Socket A Spacewalker mainboard with 768MB of PC133 SD RAM and 1729 MHz AMD Athlon XP 2100+, in with the Socket 754 Chaintech K8T800 motherboard with 1GB of 3200 DDR RAM (400) and 2200 MHz AMD Athlon 64 3200+. Only a small bump in RAM size and CPU speed, I know. Hardly seems worth taking the time to upgrade. But there's a 50% increase in performance rating and, unlike Cyrix, I've found I can trust AMD when they estimate such a thing. Added to that is the memory throughput increase by using DDR RAM. Added to that is a streamlined version of Win2k I've created. All in all, I figure I should have at least doubled my raw computing power.

I unplugged the multitude of cables from the back of my computer and discovered a couple that I wasn't quite sure of. I don't remember installing the software that monitors my UPS during my last several installs, so I'm not sure why I still had a serial cable running to it. I also clipped off the microphone cable which disappears somewhere under the desk. I remember wasting an hour under there one time trying to track it down and see where it was hung up.

My generic full tower case has a removeable motherboard tray. Unfortunately, it slides out the back of the case. The CPU heatsink I was using was too large to slide out the hole, and I had misplaced the special tool which I was supposed to use to remove it. I removed the board as if the tray wasn't removeable. It wasn't very hard, except that there were places my fingers didn't want to go. I don't remember it being that tight in there when I installed the thing.

I'd never installed a CPU in a Socket 754 before and I was a little nervous. I was used to the Socket A CPU which had a missing pin on one corner (and usually an arrow or even descriptive text) to tell you the orientation in the socket. The Athlon 64 CPU had missing pins on all four corners. I eventually realized that one corner had more pins missing than the others and figured out the orientation.

I carefully lowered the locking lever, which took a tiny bit more effort than I remembered from my last Socket A installation. I had a moment of panic and thought that maybe I'd not seated the CPU in the socket deeply enough. I lifted the locking lever and tried to remove the CPU, but it seemed to be stuck in there. I could have probably pried it up, but I feared bending or breaking a pin and decided to leave it.

I'd purchased a pretty hefty heatsink and fan. I took it out of the box, pulled off an odd piece of packaging, and started to pull the protective plastic wrap off the thermal pad on the bottom. My finger mired up in the edge of said plastic. That's when I realized that it wasn't a thermal pad with a piece of protective plastic wrap. Instead, it was a pre-smoothed glob of thermal paste. The odd piece of packaging was there to make sure the paste didn't touch the bottom of the box or anything else during shipping. I smoothed it back as best I could.

I would have aborted right then, but the Athlon 64 has a heat spreader that the Athlon XP doesn't. The 64 is also supposed to run cooler, if I remember correctly. The Socket 754 heatsink was considerably more substantial than most Socket A heatsinks I'd seen and the motherboard was designed so that the heatsink was seated much more securely. I decided to risk it.

After the minor embarrassment of putting the PS/2 mouse and keyboard plugs in the wrong holes, I managed to get to BIOS and set my settings. I realized at that point that I'd forgotten to hook up my drives. The harddrive cables reached fine but I had to move my DVD drive down a bay to get it to reach. The floppy drive connector was on the bottom of this motherboard. The floppy drive itself was at the very top of the full tower case. My longest floppy cable is a couple of inches too short. I picked up a new one at the local shop for $3.

I installed Windows 2000, extra drivers for the new motherboard, then my trusty old drivers for my video and TV cards. After I got a few applications installed and running, I started reconnecting the cables and letting Windows detect the devices. During this process I moved the computer and the power cord fell out of the back of the power supply. I must not have pushed it back in far enough. This is another reason why you should power off before connecting cords to the back of your computer.

When I rebooted, one of my apps started complaining that the directory where it stored its settings was corrupt and I needed to run Scandisk. Chkdsk discovered some crosslinked files and deleted them for me. The app ran again.

While installing the last of my apps, I realized that I'd installed an older version of one. I went to Control Panel to uninstall it. I couldn't find my Add/Remove Programs icon. Not there. I tried a quick reinstall/repair Windows, but that didn't seem to help. I was about to panic when I remembered that I was running a stripped down version of Windows and checked the site that I used as reference when stripping it down. Sure enough, if you remove Internet Explorer, you lose the Add/Remove Programs icon. If the program doesn't have an uninstall entry in the Start menu, doesn't have its own uninstall program, and doesn't have an uninstall log, I'll have to uninstall it manually in the future.

On the bright side, if it didn't have any of those, odds are that Add/Remove Programs wouldn't have been able to uninstall it anyway.

The page I mentioned that explains how to strip down Windows 2000 is located at vorck.com/remove-ie.html

Copyright 2005 by Troy H. Cheek. Reprint with prior written permission only. Comments and questions to