Helped a friend set up a new PeeCee tonight

[ho'ard]

An HP desktop, Athlon 64 something 4200 something something, 250 hard drive, 1 GB RAM, 16x DVD burner, 19" LCD monitor, windows XP superduper media edition (every ten years the word "media" is in for a year I guess).

Anyways . . . it went very smoothly, as easy as setting up a mac. Just thought I'd tell the world.

[Mike Sellers]

Ha, try ungrading a 700 MHz HP from Windows ME to XP. I did that a couple of weeks ago and I'm scarred for life. : )

[ho'ard]

I was expecting endless install times but it was all pretty quick. I didn't catch the speed of the CD-ROM but it must be a fast one. I forgot it was some sort of dual processor athlon, but the processor wouldn't be the bottleneck for installing stuff off CDs.

The upgrade you describe is the sort of thing you can only really do when the compuer's at home and you can just go check in on it every few hours. I won't start a major job in someone else's home anymore.

[Mike Sellers]

Well, the first big problem I encountered was, my friend had let the virus definitions update expire three months earlier and it was infested with trojans and spyware which crippled the internet. Downloading AVG Anti-virus took over two hours because of this. 4 1/2 hours and almost nothing accomplished. Then I took it home with me over a weekend to install the XP. I used the MS File & Settings transfer program to back up their files and also burned a copy of the Documents folder.

After installing XP, the File & Settings program wouldn't import the old data no matter what I did. My mistake was thinking MS had this File & Settings transfer thing worked out after five years. Hitting the message boards after I encountered the problem proved me wrong. Good thing I also backed up that Documents folder. The ony thing they really wanted to carry over was e-mail and, luckily, they had their e-mail set up to leave copies on the server so it all flooded back in when I fired it up. And I showed them how to add people to their contacts. Big loss was sent mail and browser favorites but it wasn't that bad.

[ho'ard]

Hmmm . . . I clicked "later" for all the virus crap.
Do you think XP is a prone to virii as ME?

[davester]

h' Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Hmmm . . . I clicked "later" for all the virus
> crap.
> Do you think XP is a prone to virii as ME?

You're joking, right?

[Mike Sellers]

XP is a lot easier to set up preventative programs. Free AVG anti-virus and Microsoft's free AntiSpyware is about all you need and they both can be set to update and run every day.

[ho'ard]

davester Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> h' Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Hmmm . . . I clicked "later" for all the
> virus
> > crap.
> > Do you think XP is a prone to virii as ME?
>
> You're joking, right?

No, not this time.

[wowzer]

I dont trust anything microsloth. I use adaware and AVG for my pc's at home.