So yesterday, after a particularly tough day at work, I decided to risk putting my computer together. The motherboard showed up at some time on Tuesday without the need for the signature that so delayed my first shipment. I guess replacement parts aren’t considered as valuable as the original shipment?
Anyway, I pop in all the parts, hook them up, all the time thinking ‘Man, I am going to press this power button and the darn thing isn’t going to turn on.’ A problem which has plagued me on more than one occasion, but was particularly dreaded this time, not only because of the previous problems, but because I was generally just too tired to stick my face in the case and try and figure out which wires I had crossed, or accept the possibility that something else was broken.
So I finish up, put the case in place, and low and behold, the power turns on when I hit the power button. (Ah technology.) The motherboard blurb pops up on the screen as I stick in the Windows 7 disk I have. It loads for five minutes and everything pops up all fancy as is Windows wont.
I tell it, it’s going to install Windows for me, and it displays the drives on which this is possible. All of them, except for the one on which Windows already is. I stare, for a moment, at the only 2gigs remaining free on my C drive, wondering where the heck the ‘reformat and install on this drive’ option is…
Well as far as I can tell, there isn’t one. So I figure I’ll have a better chance trying the only other install option, which is an upgrade while Windows is running. So I pull out the CD, restart, and get the fun ‘You’ve changed something, you have to reactivate.’ message. I try to get past it only to find out that the ps2 keyboard and mouse I have plugged in (when a computer has no OS, it has trouble reading usb keyboards and mouses as what they are, so I have a backup.) do not work. Nor do the usb keyboard or mouse.
After a few moments of disbelief and a restart (just in case) I shut down the computer and pull out the hard drive that has the C drive on it. I then proceed to my husband’s computer, where lots of fun and boot drive setting later I clean off the drive with a shift-delete. NOW I put the hard drive back into my computer and get the installation going.
When it’s finally ready for human input it starts up and of course there’s immediately the message for ‘activate windows’. I click on the activate, forgetting that I have not yet installed the drivers for my motherboard, meaning the Internet does not work and the gosh darn OS blue screens on me. Once I ignore the activation thing I actually get to Windows, am able to install my drivers and everything is peachy.
So the moral of the story is: Everything works forever except Windows 7 is dumb in some ways that will likely never matter again.
