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Upgrading Mom's PC

Background

A couple of Christmases ago Rich and I decided to get Mom a new PC. Although her previous PC (a 100 MHz 486 machine, I think) was good enough for word processing and Email, she was interested in digital photography - which meant she needed a faster processor plus USB ports. We thought simply getting a new PC would be easier than trying to add speed and USB connectivity to the old PC. A 600 MHz Celeron / 128 MB memory / 20 GB hard drive system was good enough - indeed, Mom would have a faster PC than either Rich or I had back then.

I was responsible for getting the PC; Rich shopped around for the digital camera. We also got her a modem, and Rich got her an LCD display at a later Christmas.

More recently, Rich signed up for a cable modem connection. He also got a wireless router and wireless access cards for both his laptop and Mom's PC, so they could access the Internet simultaneously and keep the phone line clear.

Can't access Fidelity's NetBenefits.com site

Within a week or two of the new broadband access, Mom noticed a problem accessing Fidelity's NetBenefits.com web site: she could get to the login page, but could not log in - nothing would happen and the browser would eventually time out. At first we thought the problem was at Fidelity's end, but then I noticed that I couldn't access Hewlett-Packard's web site either. However, I could get to HP's site on Rich's laptop.

It seemed something broke on Mom's PC such that certain web sites could not be accessed.

Free fixes didn't help

This was during the Thanksgiving weekend - specifically the Friday morning after. Best Buy actually had an early morning special on an eMachines PC: 2.6 GHz Athlon XP processor, 128 MB memory, 60 GB hard drive for only $199 after rebates. Very tempting! But I thought I could fix Mom's PC without spending anything, and besides Best Buy was jammed with shoppers at 6 in the morning - I should know, I was there but there wasn't any parking available.

I thought it was a problem with Microsoft Internet Explorer (MSIE), so I downloaded Mozilla. Didn't help. I also downloaded and reinstalled MSIE. Didn't help.

I thought there might be a problem accessing pages with Javascript, so I downloaded and installed Sun's Java Virtual Machine to replace the Microsoft version. Didn't help.

Was it the wireless card? I disabled the wireless connection and reconnected Mom's old (but trusty) modem and connected the old-fashioned way. Didn't help.

How about reinstalling Windows? I went home and got my Win98SE CD - it's what was running on both Mom's PC and my laptop - and reinstalled Win98SE. Didn't help.

Could it be a virus? The virus checker on Mom's PC hadn't been updated in 2-3 years. I went to McAfee's web site and ran their web-based virus checker. It actually detected a Trojan horse on Mom's PC, a simple one that redirected MSIE's search window to a spammer's version (which emphasized medications without prescriptions, Viagra, penis enlargement, mortgage deals, etc.). I was able to delete the Trojan horse, fix the registry and, with reinstalling MSIE, restored the MSIE search. Didn't help.

Upgrade to Windows XP Home

OK, guess it's time to upgrade Mom's PC to WinXP. I hoped that whatever was broken in Mom's PC would be replaced when WinXP was installed.

Rich and I went to Best Buy after dinner. Unlike early in the morning, Best Buy was not crowded and we found parking easily. I got the last copy of Windows XP Home in the store. I also got Norton Anti-Virus, the Pro edition with 2 licenses - one for Mom's PC, one for my laptop.

Tried to install WinXP in Mom's PC - but the CD-ROM drive couldn't read the CD. Maybe the CD's dirty? Cleaning it didn't help. Was it a bad CD? No, because Rich could read the CD on his laptop. Was the CD-ROM drive faulty? Didn't think so, it could read all other CDs. Maybe the weird holographic label of the CD was throwing off the CD-ROM drive? I tried putting some tape on the top, but it didn't help.

Eventually I noticed that whenever the WinXP CD was in Mom's CD-ROM drive, it made some wobbly noises when it started spinning up to speed, and eventually failed. I've read that it is possible for CDs to shatter if unbalanced and brought up to high speeds, and that some CD-ROM drives will shut down before this happens. Maybe that's the problem? The outer edge of the CD did feel rough.

Since the WinXP activation code is printed on a sticker and not encoded on the CD itself, I reasoned that the CD itself might not have copy protection and could be copied. I took it home and made a copy onto another CD, one that hopefully would be better balanced than the original.

The next day I tried the copy - and it worked! Reinstalling the driver for the wireless network card was also a breeze, and soon broadband access was restored. I tried to access NetBenefits.com and HP.com - and it worked! All problems solved, right? Well...

A generic display driver replaced the Win98 driver for Mom's LCD display (Viewsonic VG150). No problem, just go to Viewsonic's web site for a WinXP driver, right? Unfortunately, Viewsonic's WinXP driver for the VG150 is not fully hardware certified. And it was a struggle to make WinXP recognize the VG150 display and match it to the driver. It was hardly Plug and Play.

The next problem: a generic "ATI Rage Mobility" WinXP driver replaced the Win98 driver for her video card. The new driver did not allow horizontal/vertical screen size adjustments. Consequently there were interference patterns on her LCD display at 1024x768 resolution that made the display virtually unusable. The display at 800x600 resolution was good, if large, so it was a workaround. The video card was by a no-name Taiwanese manufacturer, so I had no chance of finding a true XP driver for the card. (And I do mean no-name, there's no mention of the manufacturer on the card itself.)

Replace video card

Terri and I went to a salsa benefit dance at Universal that Saturday night, then went to a diner for snacks. Later I read her copy of the CompUSA ad and saw that they would have an ATI Radeon 9000 video card on sale, $50 after rebate. Considering that Mom's PC has a standard AGP slot (the Radeon 9000 supports 2X/4X AGP) and that less capable video cards actually cost more than $50, it was too good a deal to pass up - when her PC eventually gets replaced we can cannibalize the Radeon 9000. Terri was interested in an LCD display with built-in TV tuner at CompUSA, so it seemed a natural for us to visit CompUSA the next day.

I was guessing that ATI video cards generally have horizontal/vertical size adjustments; the PNY (nVidia) 5600 Ultra card in my PC doesn't have such adjustments, so I guessed if the Radeon 9000 were sold out, nVidia cards would not be an option. Luckily, we got to CompUSA early enough that I got the ATI Radeon 9000 card without any problems. (Terri's search for a portable TV is a story in itself, perhaps worthy of a future column. But I digress.)

That afternoon I installed the new video card in Mom's PC and installed the driver. It allowed horizontal/vertical size adjustments. Yippee!!!

It's now my PC as well

I spent more than the price of that $199 eMachines PC - but it's not like the eMachines was a realistic option given the crowds at Best Buy that morning. And what would Mom do with a 2.6 GHz PC? Play solitaire and surf the Web. We as a family do NOT throw out old PCs (we even have our old Commodore 64 somewhere) and we don't need yet another old PC in the basement. I like to think that with the time, effort and cash I've sunk into Mom's PC, it's now my PC as well!

I use it when I need to do massive downloads - takes hours at home over my modem, if it completes at all; takes minutes with their broadband connection. And since she's now running WinXP, it's no problem sticking in any flash RAM USB drive to bring those big files home. Since WinXP makes setups for multiple users easier, we all have our own "accounts" on her PC - I have mine set up very much like my own PC at home, down to the sound effects.

Pending upgrades

My PC, er, Mom's PC can be sluggish at times. I think it needs more memory, say 256 MB to add to the 128 MB already there - assuming there are some SIMM slots available.

A DVD-ROM drive might also be useful.

Although the existing 20 MB hard drive is only 25% full, if necessary in the future it should be possible to add a second hard drive, or perhaps replace the existing drive with something faster. I don't think I specified a 7200-rpm drive originally, so the faster drive would be a noticeable performance improvement. I'd probably try to make the faster drive the C: drive and keep the original drive for file storage and/or backup, not just throw it out.


UPDATE - 2004.10.10

Added a 256 MB PC133 SIMM to the PC, and now the PC feels much more responsive. The PC now has 384 MB total memory, with one SIMM slot still available. (There are 3 SIMM slots total.)

(This was a case when my Digressions... articles were actually helpful. After I installed the memory I checked the System information in Control Panel, it listed 384 MB of memory. Only 384 megs, I thought, shouldn't it be 512 megs? I double-checked this article, hoping I had written down how much memory Mom's PC had, and yes, it had 128 MB originally.)