Computer Update

[filkertom]

I took the desktop to the local computer store ("local" in this case meaning literally three miles down the road, thank FSM) and determined that it wasn't the power supply, and it wasn't the video card. Something in the CPU or motherboard or memory. It'll cost $35 and a couple of days to narrow it down.

Heck with that. I can get a new CPU and motherboard for about a hundred bucks at MicroCenter in Madison Heights, and just swap everything out. I will most likely do that tomorrow -- I have some music I MUST work on today.

I have found conflicting versions of what this will do. Some online reports suggest you have to do a full reinstall (not gonna happen). Others refer to a repair install (if I can find the disk). The most optimistic say that WinXP SP3 will simply load the default drivers until you get the proper mobo drivers in place. Any insight as to that?

Comments

[hms42]

Note - safe mode will not likely see a CD-ROM drive nor an external USB drive. So, if possible, copy the drivers CD to a tiny hard drive and connect it to the new motherboard. I figure you have a small capacity hard drive kicking around.

Good luck with the rebuild/upgrade.

How old was the current machine?

[solarbird]

I've never seen safe mode not recognise an internal CD-ROM drive on XP. That's very surprising to me. How often has this happened for you?

[hms42]

The last time I tried it (a while ago), it didn't see it.

[johnridley.livejournal.com]

I've never seen it either. Standard CDROM drives use the standard ATAPI layer which has to be there for it to see hard drives too.
If you have some crufty old CDROM drive with a proprietary interface, or a SCSI or USB CDROM drive, then yeah.