Windows 7 Adventure

Posted Sat Oct 31, 2009 in

JackalopeWell, this has been an adventure. Yeah, that’s the right word for it. An adventure.

I really only want one computer. My PowerMac is getting a little long in the tooth. There’s no question about it. Yet, I really don’t want to spend the $3K or so to upgrade the desktop. That’s especially true because my main reason to upgrade is video performance for the one game I play, World of Warcraft. Yes, I want to be able to run Windows too, because there are several programs I use that only run under Windows (HEC-HMS and HEC-RAS being the two most important).

So, it’s hard to justify the upgrade solely because I want to play. But, I really wanted a video upgrade. So, enter this old linux server I ran for years to support my research efforts. The need for the server diminished over the last three years, so it’s been sitting in my workroom, neglected.

Young Son and I searched and searched for identification of the board. No joy. We found a few numbers, but didn’t find anything else. He finally gave up and went back to his room. I never give up, however. I used Google to search for fragments of the numbers and finally determined that the board was manufactured by Tyan and the model is the K8WE.

The hardware is still pretty decent. It’s based on a Tyan K8WE S2895 motherboard with two Opteron 275s mounted on the board and two gigabytes of good memory. The video card was lacking (never needed anything too powerful) and the drive space is limited (2×35GB SATA drives), but still it’s decent hardware.

So, Young Son and I did a little research and learned that the NVIDIA 9800GTX of the 260 series are good performers and not top-shelf price. We drove over to Best Buy to pick one up and I shopped a bit. I knew I was going to have issues with my Windows install — I haven’t kept a Windows disk in years. In fact, the last time I bought Windows was 98ME. Yipes! But, I didn’t buy the install (besides, they only had upgrade versions on the shelf).

I got the new display adapter home and prepped the box. The card was easy to install. But then came the hard part. My old Windows 98ME disk would not boot. Neither would any of my upgrades (2K or XP) recognize the 98ME boot CD.

Urgh.

Wife needed to run errands, so I volunteered to go along. I could tell she really wanted me to. It was one of those looks. :) So, I happily went along, but vented along the way because of my frustration.

Aside: I’m learning something about myself as I get older. My frustration level is lower now than it used to be — a lot lower. I also am not current on computer hardware as I used to be. I’m over the hill. Double urgh…

I decided to buy a copy of Windows 7. I guess it’s OK for M$ to get a bit of my money now and again. I still prefer open systems and open source software whenever I can use it. We drove to Best Buy (again), but they only have the upgrades. (More on this later…) But, the nice young man in the blue polo shirt suggested we try Office Depot or Staples. Staples is close to home, so we drove there on the way home.

Fortunately, I snagged one of two remaining copies of the software. We drove home and I began the install. That part was trivial. I chose to install the 32-bit version (for now) — I may upgrade before too long, because I want to install more memory. Then I let the system upgrade while I installed WoW (three DVDs worth). Then I waited while the WoW launcher installed all the patches to bring the system current.

WoW started right up and found my account. I entered my main character and processed my user interface. All well and good. Performance is much better and now I have a machine I can actually play games on. As a perk, I also have a machine that will efficiently run the two major models I routinely use.

This morning, I was messing around with the system and noticed only one of the processors is recognized. A massive Google search began as I searched for why this should be the case. There wasn’t much out there and there are many conflicting reports. Paul Thurrott says yes. However, I could find no way to switch on the two-processor support.

I spent a lot of time searching for answers. I also upgraded the driver set for the Tyan motherboard and upgraded the BIOS while I was at it. (Bootdisk.com is recommended for help there!)

Finally, after talking to an old friend who does a lot of computer support and networking, I decided to go ahead and buy the Windows 7 Ultimate upgrade. It wasn’t an easy decision and I hated spending more money, but there is no reason not to use the hardware I already have. So, I did.

The install went easy. When I finished, I checked Task Manager and I now have four cores running. There’s a lot of processing power available. This is good because I’ll use the system for tasks requiring application that only run under Winder$.

I went ahead and connected an old Sony flat panel I had in the workroom. Wife says “You’re surrounded by computers.”

Oh yeah — the image — is of my back with one of my favorite t-shirts. Wife likes the juxtaposition between the Jackalope and “Lure him with whiskey…” so long as it’s Jack Daniel’s.

Finally, Happy Halloween. Don’t eat too many treats!