Big Gap Between Posts

It has been a while since I last posted. A few things have been going on.

The last two trips away I have had to do five day weeks. Also last week my house and surrounds got damaged by what the weather bureau referred to as a “super-cell storm”. We have had tree loppers here Friday and Saturday clearing away fallen, and some not fallen, trees.

And then over the weekend one of the families for whom I do IT support had a problem with their computer. As they are 160 klms away and as the problem sounds somewhat dire (Windows XP does not complete the boot up which most likely means one or more corrupted operating system start-up files, which probably—in-turn—means a failing hard disk) I decided the cleanest and quickest approach was most likely to build up a ‘new’ PC out of some of the many parts I have lying around and simply replace the PC that they have.

As usual this is never as simple as it first seems to be in my head. I have spent the better part of the last two days trying to get a stable configuration that will run Windows 7 for them. They are currently working on Windows XP Pro but as I have a few unused Windows 7 Home Premium licenses available from the two 3 install family packs I bought I figured that I might as well get them up to Windows 7.

The PC that I have cobbled together is not good enough for Windows 7 Aero. It only rates a Windows 7  performance score of 2.9 however it is probably going to work faster and more reliably than Windows XP Pro—I hope.

I will work on getting back to posting over the next few days. I will try and post some items while away working.