Upgrading to Windows 7

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Well, if it really is a cookie, FF can edit them or destroy them all.  Just ask it.

[Meastro444 1]

I think the best bet for you is reinstalling your entire OS.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Originally posted by: Meastro444

I think the best bet for you is reinstalling your entire OS.quote>

A good idea, then you can decide which of the software junk you want to put back.

I guess you'll have to do it on the weekend, after you finish your homework.

[joshriddle 29]

Hmmm, it stopped doing it, hmmmm. Very interesting......

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Maybe it was just allergic to you being around all the time.  On the other hand, I have had a similar situation where the power was very dirty, and someone was using a high-power piece of equipment on the same circuit.  This caused a bump that took down the system.

To relate this incident fully, at one of the depots of a courier service we had as a customer, the area control machine that did things like package scans and scheduling crashed every morning at 9 a.m. without fail.  We put a power monitor on the system and sure enough, there was a serious spike at that time every day.  We found out that the system was on the same circuit as the arc welder in the truck bay next door.

If I were you, I'd look around your house, and check the loading on your power supply.  You may find out you are near the limit of the breaker.  Computers require more or less clean power.  Even a fridge kicking in and out could do this on a marginal circuit.

[joshriddle 29]

Not me, not my junk, not the houses power supply and circuits, of all things, the CPU fan. It was going out, causing the processor and other stuff to overheat. I took a hair dryer and blew some of the dust off of it, put the cover back on, tried to start it up, then the fan starts making this loud screeching noise, and just sits there. The monitor doesn't even come on.

On my computer, there are 2 lights in the front, the green means it is turned on, yellow means the disks are active. The yellow one was solid, while the green one was turned off. I didn't want to burn up the processor so I went ahead and shut it off. I am using my moms lappy right now.

Fixing to try and find something to do. Rainy day, boring.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Those little pot fans are cheap enough, so just replace it.  Bearings burnt out, likely.

My mouse is dying.  The left button sends multiple signals.  I switched it to a left hand mouse so I could click at all.  going into town tomorrow for a new one.  I think I'll try to find a rat.  They are stronger, you know.

Actually the poor thing has given good service for nearly ten years.  I am pretty heavy on a mouse, so it is probably dying of switch compression sickness.  I'll give it a good burial in the recycle bin.

[joshriddle 29]

What I want to get is a Trackball mouse, if not a rat. My mouse is a bit uncomfortable, and is very noisy.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

My late wife had a trackball due to arthritic hands.  Worked very well on windows.  Not recognized on Linux, but I don't really care, since I mouse along just fine.  Going out to get a new mouse this morning.  Gave away all my spares a week ago, and wouldn't you know ...   I think I am going to buy two mice.  Single point of failure things are annoying.

Linux does recognize bit-pads, strangely enough.  Since I don't do that kind of graphics work, I would not use one.

[Msprintz 25]

Originally posted by: A Nonny Moose

Those little pot fans are cheap enough, so just replace it.  Bearings burnt out, likely.

quote>

If you want good cooling, I wouldn't recommend a cheap CPU cooler.  I'd recommend something within the $30-$100 range.  A good CPU cooler should be able to keep your CPU temperatures under 40 degrees celcius during normal non stressful conditions.  Under stressful conditions temperatures should be around 50-55 degrees celcius.

    

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Originally posted by: mks24

If you want good cooling, I wouldn't recommend a cheap CPU cooler.  I'd recommend something within the $30-$100 range.  A good CPU cooler should be able to keep your CPU temperatures under 40 degrees Celsius during normal non stressful conditions.  Under stressful conditions temperatures should be around 50-55 degrees Celsius.quote>

Now that's an interesting thought.  What is a stressful condition for a CPU?  It is a machine, do we have to be sensitive, now, to its little feelings?  In my day of writing operating systems the idea was to load the system in such a way that the CPU(s) never got a chance to be idle, so what is stress?  The whole idea of multiprogramming is to keep the expensive little beast as busy as possible.  We even had a few that had to be cooled with freon at low temperatures.

One of the problems with the Josephson Junction processors is that you had to have them at the temperature of liquid Helium for them to function at all, and it was just too expensive.  Led to a lot of research in superconductors though.  Those little chips we use now grew out of some of that work.  One of the outfits I worked for before I retired actually had a chip that ran on photons rather than electrons.  Very exotic, and I never knew where that project went.  It was part of a military establishment, so it probably became very, very classified.

[joshriddle 29]

Well, that old fan of mine did a fine job when it worked. Kept it down around the low to mid 70 F range. I noticed my case was rather warm the last time I touched it. The back where the PSU was was hot. I should have taken that as a wakeup call and replaced it.

Tommorow my uncle is coming out to install a new fan. Should work better on a fresh fan. Both processor and other components alike.

---

I have got to do some research on getting XP and 32 bit programs running on a 64 bit W7 platform. I know of a thing where you can put a virtual Windows XP on a Windows 7 64 bit OS. It is almost like a different operating system.

Most of my apps such as ILives reader, UI Editor, Clip2Pic, LE, BAT, Mapper/Terraformer, is what I really need to read up on. I don't want to have to change over to a different side of the computer just to use a small tool. I would be over there all the time and not be able to experience W7.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Since I am in danger of having to get a new machine, I've been researching the 32- vs. 64- bit problem.  In the Linux world, they seem to have it licked.  The 64-bit worry forum has been closed for over a year.

People I have asked say the whole business is being blown out of proportion.  Any 64-bit machine with a good operating system will happily run most 32-bit programs without incident.  There are some you have to persuade, but not many.  Further, you can load and run a 32-bit operating system on a 64-bit machine, so this must be fairly fancy hardware because it can switch decor.

I wouldn't rush across any bridges until you come to them.  Just be careful, and don't throw any tantrums when it doesn't work the first time.

[Ocram's Razr 963]

I received 2 DVDs for Windows 7 Ultimate with one purchase 64bit and 32bit. I used the 64bit one on my upgraded desktop and it worked wonderfully ever since (months ago). I just upgraded my loaner laptop with the 32bit DVD and a week after upgrading, I started getting "Could not authenticate" errors. I tried to fix it online and by telephone several times but I cannot seem to be able to buy a new key. I will just turn it in--to the person who loaned it to me--if it stops working and have him fix it himself.

[joshriddle 29]

Well, I remember having to reinstall the OS a few times. We had a hard time getting it to boot up. Wonder why. I am sure that with this new fan it will be the same. Today I am getting it in. And since we do 5 days worth of school in 4 days, we get Fridays off if we wish. My uncle is going to come over today and install the new fan.

Hopefully he doesn't want to reinstall the OS again. First time my computer was almost in an unbearably slow state. Second time was with the new disk. Hopefully he won't want to reinstall the entire system again.