Windows XP SP1 Nightmares

Santa Claus has delivered the toys under the Christmas tree and is on his way back to the North Pole. The kids have just opened all their presents from under the tree and I am glad it is over. LOL... They were about to drive mom and dad crazy as they bounced all over the house yesterday in anticipation. I guess I have forgotten what a big deal it is for kids on Christmas. HoHoHo Merry Christmas to one and all. Now, lets talk about MY Christmas gift that the Grinch left for me last night.

Remember I told you that I was going to wipe the hard drive on the family computer and start all over from scratch? I started the process at 1 pm and it should have ENDED around 6pm. From the time I used FDISK to kill the original partition to installing all of the software. Well thanks to the Grinch (who else can I blame ?) he stole my Christmas JOY by causing me to have to work on the blasted computer up until around midnight. How special.... LOL

Lets see, the last time I babbled about this I had formatted the drive with NTFS version 5 and was installing XP Professional Service Pack 1. I managed to get the OS installed with no problems and ran all of the MS Security Updates from the Windows Update website including Service Pack 2. I installed the Anti Virus software and then noticed that I did not have any sound. We cant have that so I dove in with both feet and elbows and remembered that I need to install the correct driver to make the speakers work. That is when the hardware nightmare began.

At this point I did not realize that my motherboard chip set and plug in cards were not going to work with XP SP1. After fighting with the sound card drivers for 2 + hours and multiple reboots and BSOD with the sysaudio.sys error I finally decided to blow the partition away and start all over again. That was around 7 pm that I decided that. I figured that would be the fastest way to fix the problem. When I tried to install XP with SP1 on a fresh partition I was greeted by multiple BSOD's AGAIN. At this point I gave up and took the sound card out and tried the install on a fresh partition which resulted in a BSOD so I tried to disable all sound on the MB which caused another BSOD. I finally went to the Internet and searched on the sysaudio.sys error with XP SP1 and was greeted with numerous nightmare stories of how XP SP1 just does not play well with some hardware. Well folks, guess what? Such is the case in my computer. I finally installed Microsoft ME on the computer with NO problems. I have Internet access, sound and the whole works. I also was able to install Microsoft XP Home and have it in a dual boot configuration. Everything BUT sound works on XP Home. Go figure... I think that it is time to buy a new home pc that will enable me to use XP Pro and Service pack 2.

I guess it was about 12:04 am when I looked at the laptop and noticed that I had lost wireless connectivity. Sigh... I thought, what the heck is wrong now folks? LOL... Sure enough I did not have Internet connectivity and then I found out that our entire phone service was down, no dial tone no nothing. I called Bellsouth and of course they determined that I REALLY did have a problem on the line and that it would be Monday before someone could come look at it. At this point I just turned everything off and went to bed. What else could I destroy anyway? This morning when we awakened the dial tone magically had come back on the phone. I guess the Grinch left the building and took all the gremlins with him. Thank God for that. LOL...

Now that the christmas gifts are opened and the children have calmed down some I can focus on reconfiguring our home PC with all of the software I need to install and I need to put together a bicycle together for Justin. I just hope I dont destroy that as well. LOL

So, anyway what is the moral of this story you ask? If it is NOT broken, dont fix it. LOL

Merry Christmas....

The unthinkable

Yes, I just did the unthinkable or is the word unthunkable? LOL... I am spending my FREE time wisely this weekend since I have several days off and not much else to do. I blew away the partition on my hard drive , formatted C and reinstall XP Professional. Two years ago I did an upgrade on my system in which I went from a 866 mhz Gateway Motherboard/cpu and put in a 1.1 GHZ Celeron CPU and motherboard. I found out that when service pack 1 for XP came out that I could not install it because Microsoft found that my product key was not legitimate. That is right, the software running on my PC was considered pirated by Mickeysoft. Sigh.... So, obviously when service pack 2 came out I could not install it nor could I install some applications like PERCH which demands you be running a minimum of Service Pack 1 for XP. Service Packs are pushed out to the public by Microsoft so that WE can update their buggy software and hopefully be safe from the latest and greatest security holes that are being found each and every day.
Now that some of you have Service Pack 2 there are folks out there that are finding more and more security holes in Mickeysoft OS XP. Go figure.

So, thus far I have used FDISK to blow away the non dos partition and recreated a primary dos partition. I booted to the XP OS cd and let it format the primary partition NTFS5. NTFS version 5 allows you to encrypt your files and compress them which are the two extra attributes that NTFS version 4 did not allow you to do. NTFS5 formatted fine and the OS is up and running. I entered in the correct VALID OS Product Key and registered online with Mickeysoft without a problem. Now I will spend the next 6 hours installing ALL the other Mickeysoft Security Updates including Service Pack 2. Luckily for me I have the wireless laptop fired up so I can drivel what I am doing in my blog to keep me from falling asleep and give you something to do other than to eat that other cookie or potatoe chip that is in your hand. JUST PUT IT DOWN OK?? You dont need it. hahahahahaha

Once all the security updates are done I can do a fresh install of Microsoft Office XP and the other LIST of software that I can not live without like Microsoft Activesynch for my Pocket PC and Anti Virus software which is a must have for anyone running broadband which is ALWAYS ON.... Heck, even if you are not on the Internet you should have Anti Virus software and Spybot Search and Destroy installed on your computer.

Happy Holidays!!!

So much for pictures....

I just took some digital pictures to share with YOU but of course my HELLO application and bloogerspot has decided to take the day off and not cooperate. I have grown quite lazy with regards to sharing pictures on my blog because this app makes it quiet easy. I will be waiting for Hello to fix itself before I post the pictures. I doubt that I have the ability to post pictures here on Bloglines....

Well, here we sit, just hanging out, watching the lights on the tree blink and listening to Christmas music. I took the kids and the dogs out for a 2 mile walk in the freezing weather. Gosh, that was SO MUCH FUN... LOL NOT... I am catching up on some much needed technoid reading in some of my magazine subscriptions that I rarely have time to read. I will be sharing any choice things that I find later so stay tuned.

I am thinking about taking the kids bowling this afternoon to keep cabin fever from setting in. I have not been off of work from either of my two jobs for the last 16 days so this will be nice...

Perfect gift for your favorite couch potatoe

I saw this advertisement on TV tonight and almost fell over. If I had not been sitting on the floor already I would have probably wound up there as I was laughing. How about buying a Black and Decker Jar Opener for your favorite couch potatoe. I had flash backs of Jay Leno saying " How FAT are we Americans....." Have you seen the new Hardees Monster Burger commercial? I think that this burger has 4000 calories in one burger. Now we have Black and Decker Jar Openers as well? Does that mean we are REALLY that lazy now? LOL... God help us...

Bloglines Blog

Ok, for those of you that want to keep up with my BLOG here but do not want to figure out RSS readers etc I have started a new BLOG at Bloglines that will mirror this one. When I publish here and I have time I will publish it over at Bloglines as well. You never know, I might blog different content to both blogs just to keep you on your toes. LOL...

http://www.bloglines.com/blog/jcmoffitt

Merry Christmas



James Moffitt
http://www.jesus-connect.net/jcmoffitt
moffittj@bellsouth.net

Christmas 2004 is almost upon us....

I am trying to get into the Christmas spirit and for some reason it is just not working.
I am not sure WHAT the "christmas spirit" is supposed to be per sae or HOW to find it but I feel that it must have something to do with a feeling of JOY and PEACE and HAPPINESS.
One of the things about growing up into an adult is that you find out that Santa Claus really is not the magical fellow that the weatherman always finds on weather radar each Christmas Eve as he is making his way from the North to the South giving the hope filled children a reason to go to bed. Now I know that the reason that the parents want the children to go to bed is so that they can put together all those hard to configure toys and finally go to sleep themselves before being awakened by the kids bouncing off the walls.

I suppose that since the magic is gone for me that atleast my children can enjoy as much of the Christmas season that is possible. Justin at the age of 9 and Kristina at the age of 12 understand that there is no St Nick and that mommie and daddy had a rough year financially and thanks to Food Lion they will actually have a Christmas gift under the tree.
I am glad that this is possible but I HATE the fact that our kids are getting Christmas because of HDST and Food Lion. I am hopeful that mom and dad can have a much more propserous New Year in 2005 and that we can find ourselve able to play Mr and Mrs Claus next year.

I am very thankful that while I might not find myself eaten up with the Christmas spirit I still have a lot to be thankful for. I am thankful that God is still God and that He is still in control of our ultimate destiny. I am glad that our family is in good health, together under one roof and that we are able to enjoy the basic needs of life which is a roof over our heads, clothes on our backs, food for our stomachs and a place to lay our heads at night. Once you get past the basic needs everything else is icing on the cake. Unfortunatley we live in a day and age that determines our worth and our happiness by how much junk we can accumulate and how much fun we can have. We find ourselves comparing one another with one another and falling miserably short in some areas and feeling like failures. If you never compare yourself to your neighbor or co worker and wonder why you have not achieved what they have or dont have what they have or look like they do then you are doing better than most folks. I sometimes find myself doing just that and it only causes me to be down in the dumps and feeling puny. So, instead of looking without I will chose to look within and just be thankful for where we are at.

The first two quarters of this year sucked financially but somehow we managed to survive it. October finds me with a better job in the I.T. industry which certainly took a LOT of pressure off the budget and still playing a major game of catch up. The year 2005 will find me filling my tiny little brain with semi useless computer jargon, acronyms and technology tidbits so that I can obtain little pieces of paper that show folks that I know NT stands for Nuclear Tomatoe. LOL... In the month of January I hope to take my A+ certification test and hopefully pass it the first time. The Network + will follow and then I will be diving off into the world of Citrix and Microsoft Server 2003. I just hope that I do not fry the last brain cell I have left. LOL...

Katy and the kids are on vacation until afte the 1st day of 2005 and I will probably plug along and not get any time off thanks to most of the holidays falling on the weekend anyway. The nice thing about that is that things have been a tad bit slow for me at work which has allowed me to catch my breath and do some studying.

My hope, wish and prayer for you is that you will take the time in the next four days to sit down and appreciate where you are at in life. If you have family take the time to reaquaint yourself with them. Sit down and talk to them, hug them and let them know that you appreciate them for who they are. Get in touch with long lost relatives and wish them a Merry Christmas. Yes, I know, people are not perfect and we all have to deal with our good and bad side. Just figure out a way to overlook the bad and highlight the good in the folks around you. Everyone will want to feel loved and appreciated this season and as I have said before this is not a happy time for everyone. There are folks out there that do everything that they can just to survive the holiday season. So, if you know someone that needs a friend and for someone to show that they know they are alive try to be that someone.

Happy Holidays and God bless