Pedro Itriago
11-06-2008, 01:02 PM
(moral of the story at the end)
I had a run-in with XP yesterday that got me so mad, I had to wait a day to even write about it.
A relative of mine has a Lenovo desktop that he got through an ISP offer. XP is in it.
He had a problem with a black-out and someone told him the mobo was toasted. Unable to find support, he came to me.
Unfortunately for him, it wasn't only the mobo but the processor as well that got zinged by the black-out.
No Lenovo nor ISP support, so I had to buy a new mobo and processor. I already warned him that he must likely would need to reactivate after such change because it was too much of a change for the activation watchdog not to trigger itself.
After a few hours of aggravation dealing with incompatible case connectors and changing them to be compatible, I switched the thing on, bracing myself for the reactivation message. In comes the Intel (mobo's) splash screen, then the XP splash screen and then...nothing. Just a black screen. A lot of disk activity at the begining but no more after less than 2 minutes.
My guess? too much new stuff coming from a P4 mobo to a dual core one, so the thing needed the mobo drivers.
Tried safe mode, instant reboot after the XP splash screen. Tried every possible booting option, even command promtp only and if it didn't give me a balck screen, it rebooted.
After thinking a lot, I found out the problem was the activation thingy. The way it bit my arse was by denying any kind of repair (even using the XP cd) because, being an OEM version, it was looking for the Lenovo mobo and since it was gone, the license was revoked automatically.
Backed up everything from his drive after having to change user ownership of many a data folder to be able to back 'em up. Bought a new copy of XP and re-installed the thing. Obviously, any previous software installed was gone, so he had to do that for himself afterwards.
I had forgotten why I havent' upgraded from w2k. Talk about a reminder.
So now you know kids. If you buy a brand computer with XP or Vista installed, you've been had big time.
I had a run-in with XP yesterday that got me so mad, I had to wait a day to even write about it.
A relative of mine has a Lenovo desktop that he got through an ISP offer. XP is in it.
He had a problem with a black-out and someone told him the mobo was toasted. Unable to find support, he came to me.
Unfortunately for him, it wasn't only the mobo but the processor as well that got zinged by the black-out.
No Lenovo nor ISP support, so I had to buy a new mobo and processor. I already warned him that he must likely would need to reactivate after such change because it was too much of a change for the activation watchdog not to trigger itself.
After a few hours of aggravation dealing with incompatible case connectors and changing them to be compatible, I switched the thing on, bracing myself for the reactivation message. In comes the Intel (mobo's) splash screen, then the XP splash screen and then...nothing. Just a black screen. A lot of disk activity at the begining but no more after less than 2 minutes.
My guess? too much new stuff coming from a P4 mobo to a dual core one, so the thing needed the mobo drivers.
Tried safe mode, instant reboot after the XP splash screen. Tried every possible booting option, even command promtp only and if it didn't give me a balck screen, it rebooted.
After thinking a lot, I found out the problem was the activation thingy. The way it bit my arse was by denying any kind of repair (even using the XP cd) because, being an OEM version, it was looking for the Lenovo mobo and since it was gone, the license was revoked automatically.
Backed up everything from his drive after having to change user ownership of many a data folder to be able to back 'em up. Bought a new copy of XP and re-installed the thing. Obviously, any previous software installed was gone, so he had to do that for himself afterwards.
I had forgotten why I havent' upgraded from w2k. Talk about a reminder.
So now you know kids. If you buy a brand computer with XP or Vista installed, you've been had big time.