OK...everybody here....Good. I am now going to install Windows XP on my Dell GX60 surplus box to give to a relative. I verified the hardware works prior to installing XP by booting DSL 4.2.5 and making sure the video card and sounds and inputs like LAN worked. They did after I changed a bios setting about shared video memory. Seems it will default to a 1MB vid card, which looks horrible in ANY OS!!!! Fixed that, everything checks out well, time to put on XP.
Remove DSL CD, pop in XP.....Boots since the CD was set to first boot device...no surpirses during the install. It has a 40GB Drive I will split into 2, 20GB for XP...the rest for Linux. Tell the XP disk formatter this and really it just works. Until it is done with the install and we get to the first boot.
Asks me to activate..I say yes, it wants to dial out. It has a working modem, I have no landline. The network card drivers are not on the CD. Fine Skip it....type in a name for user..blah blah. It boots....Screen looks real bad....I will fix it, Graphics card is not detected right....Fine, I will grab the driver from Dell's site the box has a service tag on it...oh wait, lan won't work. Oh Yeah, the audio driver is not working either, so I have to get that too....but its low down when I can't talk to the world or see pretty pictures.
OK....don't panic, I have other machines...grab a flash drive and pop over to the good XP box. Dell site, type in tag...yadda yadda...find drivers I need and put them on flash drive. Plug it into new box, extract and search.....now it works!
Ok, lets activate and see if I bought a good number from the surplus store...Success! I did, well we knew that I guess. Ok, legit windows is better then stolen windows...more popups for porn, less for "Your copy if Windows may be.....". Onto the software.....Oh, updates popping up, fine yes install them.
Onto the software....oh....Lan is not setup even though internet works, I have always thought this is dumb...the network either works or doesn't. How many users have a home network and have missed this step and thought it was down......that many!? Me too.
Ok, setup the properties.....onto getting software from the LAN....oh....it wants me to reboot.....not right now I'm still updating.....ignore it, and it works anyways.....why did I need to reboot if it was going to work, the damn prompt told me it wouldn't work unless I reboot......dumb computer.
Ok...Onto the software?....yes...Fire up Run command Run: http://getfirefox.com
Only site I plan to visit in IE on this box before I give it away...I mean it too!
That works, click run from location, let it start.....hit the file server on my lan with all my windows software on it.....that is a box running Linux and sharing drives via Samba..oh the irony!
Find Office 2003, start the install.....system updates are done and it wants me to reboot.....ignore that I am installing stuff....Fire firefox up and head to http://free.grisoft.com for AVG Free. I pay for mine, but free works almost as well....start that puppy downloading.
Image viewer...Well I like Irfan View because it is fast and free and easy to use and nice. I have it on the server...v4.1 plus the plug-in pack installed....Codecs next
FFDSHow the SSE2 version from sourceforge. I am pretty sure I will not need this, since most of my files are mp3 or mpeg2, but just in case....going on to media player
Media Player Classic. I love it for movies and it does audio too. File Server for that....If this were my system I would install Winamp, but my target does not have music a the reason to own a computer, so I will skip it.
File manager. I like lots, but I use a43 when explorer just isn't enough. Works faster, and is free and easy. I also like xplorer2, but it is a little clunky for admin to me
PDF...screw adobe reader..too slow..I like either Sumatra or Foxit Reader. I went with Foxit for its less then annoying background color.
That jsut about does it. I configured OE for a single email address with variables I knew already. I installed TweakUI, Command Here, and the Clear Type Tuning Wizard as I know this system will be deployed with LCD Monitor. Then I restarted
Then it updated again and I restarted again.
Then I called it done, total time was about 75mins start to finish
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