I made the decision recently to upgrade our XP machine at home to Windows 7, also upgrading the memory and primary hard drive while I was at it. Little did I know what a headache it would be.
First, I had to figure out which version of Windows 7 to buy (Starter? Home Premium? Professional? Ultimate? 32-bit? 64-bit?). Then I needed to find out if I could buy an upgrade disc (I could, but would have to do a clean install). THEN I needed to find a way to install Windows 7 upgrade on a fresh hard drive and not one with an existing XP installation. Lord.
I upgraded my memory from 1 gig to 4 gig, but then realized I had to change a setting in the bios so that the motherboard would see all of the memory.
The hard drive’s been the biggest pain, though. Turns out I bought a drive that can only be used in SATA-II configuration, despite the fact the manual says otherwise. And I only found this out after several hours of trying to figure out why my motherboard was telling me that “The BIOS does be not installed.” My motherboard only supports SATA I. So I ordered a SATA PCI (but NOT PCI Express!) card. BUT I ORDERED THE WRONG CARD. I’d misread something and simply ordered a SATA I PCI card. Freaking irritating.
After all this and all the time I’ve spent, I’m still sitting here where I was a week ago. The upgrade hasn’t happened and now won’t happen for a few more weeks.
I should have just bought a brand new machine.
Posted in Technology