A couple of weeks ago, i got a new graphics card and some RAM. The new graphics card replaced what i correctly guessed was a dead graphics card. I installed the RAM and that was that, or so i thought. Since then, i’ve been having some fairly random problems…
When i got my current PC, Man Utd were a month away from being crowned champions of europe, 2008. I had no major hardware problems with it up until yesterday when my graphics card failed. The result was an infinite loop of streaky, colourful boot screens…
Over the past couple of days, there’s been a big fuss made over Apple’s ‘secret’ location tracker on the iPhone. Whilst everyone was huffing and puffing over privacy & security, i was delighted to hear it existed and was easily accessible via an app. However i was disappointed to discover the app would only run on Mac… (i sync my iPhone to my PC)…
Although i’ve done it for years, i don’t even realise i’m doing it most of the time. Fixing things. When things go wrong, i have to get them back to normal ASAP – i’ll spend all day trying to fix a problem with one of my PC’s if something is up.
Today i arrived home from college to a stuttering internet connection. Something up with windows 7. Don’t ask me what it was because i can’t tell you. But it was nasty anyway… driver updates, restarts, patches from windows, configuring IP’s, system restores…
Nothing. Still problems. I then uninstalled everything i could think of that may be causing the problem… still nothing. At this stage i was just getting fed up and considering a full reinstall of windows 7… which may not have been a bad thing – it’s probably smart to start from scratch every few months, but it does mean a lot of work.
Anyway, i kept plugging away and trying things until eventually something worked. Don’t know what it was, don’t really care either. Bottom line is things are back to normal 
It’s great being able to fix problems yourself… it’s not great fixing them of course and head scratching for hours on end, but eventually it all comes together.
No doubt had i taken my PC in to a shop they’d have wiped everything and reinstalled 7 – that’d be the least time consuming option
Windows 7 launches 1 month from today. A new operating system for most of us means getting that new, lean, mean feeling back.
The switch to windows 7 will be a big one for me. I’ll not only be switching to 7, but i’ll be switching from 32 bit to 64 bit – opening the door for more RAM. As i write this post, i’m using 1.9 of my 3 GB’s and that’s with my ‘regular’ apps open.
As soon as i install Windows 7, i’ll have 25% more RAM available to me (as i have 4 gigs currently installed, but 32bit Vista can only read 3 gigs). However, i also plan to completely re-organise EVERYTHING whilst i’m at it.
Music, videos, documents, design work… i have plenty of it and although i like to keep things relatively clean and tidy on my PC, things could be much more organised. So i intend to buy another internal hard drive to double or triple the 500GB’s of space i already have.
In total, i have about 500gigs of stuff scattered across my netbook, external hard drive and desktop, but ideally i’d like to keep everything in the one spot (and have it well organized). I really can’t afford to have my desktop PC out of action for more than a day or two, so in order to make the move to 7, i’ll have to start planning NOW and moving things around NOW.
I can then just wipe my hard-drive, install another and install a fresh version of 7 when it arrives. Loading everything back on and installing applications is the hard / time consuming part, but it will be worth it!
It will give me a new injection of life as everything will feel faster and easier to use
