MacGyver

So I found an extra present inside my mail box, to today I headed to the store to get the HP DV6-2088DX that was on clearance. This was a total steal. This laptop was a Black Friday special at Best Buy back during Thanksgiving.

• Windows 7 Home Premium
• 500GB HDD
• 8GB DDR2 RAM
• 16′ Screen

So it was well worth it for $450. So like what I do with all my computers (and I am sure you do as well…) I name them all. This one name is called ‘MacGyver’ because MacGyver fixes just about everything around and I seem to do that as well.

Detective Cash "Shades" Tankenson

So lets recap what happened in the past 24 hours:

• Came home from work, BOSD Windows 7.
• Restarted.
• Firefox would lockup when browsing the net. Other applications would go fine.
• Restarted: No BOOTMGR FOUND, DISK ERROR, etc al.
• Drive to store.
• Buy 1TB HDD and S-ATA enclosure kit
  • My internal S-ATA enclose is busted. I am going to take it out.
• Install HDD by sliding it in.
• Install Windows 7 + Applications

I am going to run a drive integrity check on my two other 500GB drives to make sure they are working fine. They should be since they were not used as often as the Windows 7/Vista drive was since it also held my Steam Applications as well.

Anyways.. I can now go back into my routine of using my computer without any errors cropping up.

After doing a quick backup of my entire “User” directory to make sure I retained all the information I needed, Documents, Emails, etc. (I did forget my mIRC stuff… since it’s not stored in the users directory and I accidentally formatted my application drive during Vista Setup. I have to reinstall everything already so no worries there. More to come of this part later.)  I went ahead and shut down the computer and started unhooking everything from the internals first. This happened fairly quickly. Power cables, device connection cables, and removal of the DDR2 RAM… all 8GB of it. Where the slow down was the motherboard screws and separators. It seems when I built my computer back down in Virgina in April of 2007, I had them so tight that it would never move. This was a bad thing on my part since I had so much trouble removing them without damaging them and the old motherboard. On top of that… once I did get the old motherboard out, I still needed the motherboard spacers which were still attached to the old motherboard. I didn’t have any tools to remove them. Well.. not anything that I can grip on to them. So I was in trouble.

I needed gas for my car. So I decided to take a late night stroll to the local Hess station to get filled up so I didn’t have to do it this morning. No dice on the tool needed. Ok.. it was still 9:30pm-ish. King Kullen had a hardware section in the store, but I didn’t know if they have the tool I needed. Drove for another 15 (including coming back from King Kullen) I had succeeded in a goal: Tools bought! I felt just like Indiana Jones when he noticed the knights shield in the Tomb of St. Richard (Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade) that I completed a huge part of the puzzle.

After getting back from King Kullen, I worked on the motherboard spacers and removed them to prep the new board placement. Once removed I went ahead and re-attached the motherboard spacers back into the case. Placing the new board is always fun as the alignment has to be perfect. One thing I forgot the first time around was the dreaded cover plate that keeps dust out near the USB, LAN, and Audio Ports. So I had to again remove now the new motherboard and reattach. Luckly this took of all 5 minutes of my time.

After taking a quick 10 minute break…. I started putting everything back together. New DDR3 RAM was installed first. One thing that I had to due was cut the never used tubing for the system since it was blocking the bottom RAM slot. This was the second time that I had problems with it. The first time was the CPU in the old board that caused me irritation. Getting out my cooking knife I made two clean cuts and then installed the last stick of DDR3 RAM. Side Note: The RAM placed in this board is in a better place then the previous one as you can access it still easier than you could with the old one since the graphics card on the old one would overlap the RAM slots. Water cooling in the near future… not anytime soon.

So with everything hardware  (NVIDIA Graphics card, Creative Sound Card) and all power cables re-attached, I hooked up only my primary drive and the BluRay drive kit so I didn’t format my data drives during the installation. But as I mentioned earlier, I formatted my Application directory during install instead of my old windows partition. Doh! And I even forgot my custom mIRC files. Double Doh! <Insert Witty Comment Here About Stupidity>

So after a double reinstall of Vista Ultimate 64-bit and a day after work the computer is back up and running. Now time to get all my applications back installed. As I need them I been downloading them and installing. Rebooting takes of all ~15 seconds to happen. So I don’t mind the wait!

Which monitor do I have? It’s the Samsung SyncMaster 241mp. We think the VGA circuitry soldering is loose or it’s just very worn out. When color is mixed in with a pure black or pure white spectrum, that is when it flickers. I becomes very apparent during large portions of silver. So that’s the deal and with that comes decision making time.

A few friends have suggest that I ditch the idea of getting the Samsung 275T 27-inch Wide-Screen (viewed in great detail here) or to get an actual TV. The problem with the TV part of it that even though it is cheaper, I don’t get the ability to carry it around to LAN parties. It also makes it a real drag to move it from place to place. The feature I love the most of this 241mp is that it has PIP (Picture in Picture) mode so you can use your computer and have the PIP from one of the other inputs. I can not get that with a TV, but I can get it with the Samsung 275T.

I have a problem which will be solved by the end of the week. I am going to order a new one either tomorrow or Friday. I am even considering getting the 241mp fixed so I could use it as a secondary monitor for duel monitor support/setup. That has yet to be determined if it can happen.