I'm Really Starting to Dislike Microsoft
I spent a good portion of this weekend compressing two systems into one as I plumbed the depths of Antec's P150 case. (More about that at a later moment. It's really quite a surprising enclosure.) I basically discarded a 3GHz Pentium 4 system, cannibalizing some of the parts into what had been a lackluster Athlon XP 3000. The Pentium was born first but it had begun hiccupping of late and upgrading its RDRAM memory was not a satisfying thought. The Athlon needed a BIOS upgrade.
So there I was, with hours invested in blowing dust off of boards and out of heatsinks, trying to keep parts straight, wiping down fans --all with years of accumulated crud. It was sort of fun, except for inhaling. Wished I'd gone down to the garage and gotten a dust mask. But that's neither here nor there.
During the course of events I had to make a few modifications. I had two front fans with motherboard-style power connectors and they were each too short to reach the connector on the motherboard. Worse still, there was only on connector within reach. I did some soldering. (Which reminds me. That Cold Heat soldering iron? I guess if you practice enough, long enough, you might be able to get 'er done with something like that. Me? After a half hour of futzing around I went back to my 100-watt Radio Shack soldering gun, cord and all. It made life much simpler.)
Had to make a Y-connector too. Also no big deal. The Lab of Doom and Pepsi Cola is always stocked with odds and ends of this and that, especially solder and heat-shrink tubing. (By the way, the plug-in power cables for the Antec NeoHe, although they look similar to those found with the NeoPower, aren't interchangeable. That's why I was short a few 4-pin molex-ended connectors. That's why the extra soldering.)
When I was done, I had an AMD-based system with 1GB, a total of 400GB of storage, two optical drives, a floppy!!, a Radeon 9700 graphics card, a WInTV PRV250, and a lot of spare parts --some of which I gave away earlier today, some that have gone into "the bin.".
I really wasn’t sure that the revitalized system would work. Both of them had been sitting around for more months then I cared to think about while I birthed an 840E and 955E systems and tinkered with neighbors’ PCs that had become ill one way or another. (Never let the neighborhood know what you do.) But it did. At least it started to, until Windows told me that the configuration of my system had changed significantly and I had to re-register.
Believe it or not, I can understand the situation. Now that doesn't mean I appreciate it, just understand it. What I didn't understand was why, when I tried to go through the standard Internet registration, I was told I'd exceeded the maximum number of installs. That would be one (1), in case you haven't been keeping track.
Let's put aside the fact that I was abandoning a licensed and registered copy of Windows on the Pentium computer. I wasn't re-installing Windows on this homologated AMD chassis. It was a licensed and registered copy of Windows that told me I had to re-register because of the configuration change, not because I was re-installing (which I wasn't).
Thankfully, the live folk on the service line seemed to have no problem exchanging 40-something character keys with me and everything went back to normal after not too long. But I do this all the time. It's what I do –put things together, take them apart, put them back together differently. I've put up with this silliness for quite a while but it's really starting to weigh me down.
The hidden truth is, you can't register Windows more than once --even if nothing changes. After that first time, if you try to do it again (or if Windows tells you that you must do it again), you can't do it automatically. You must go through the hoops. That's the rules. They're stupid rules. They're wrapped in paranoia. They cause the most annoyance to people who aren't breaking the rules so they can be slightly annoying to the people who are.
I'm getting tired of it. Aren't you? No, don't tell me Linux. That's not an answer. That's just a different set of problems. Something needs to be done about Microsoft and they way it treats people. I don't want it assumed that I'm guilty of doing something wrong simply because some algorithm in Windows thinks I am. I'm supposed to be running the computer. Aren't you?
So there I was, with hours invested in blowing dust off of boards and out of heatsinks, trying to keep parts straight, wiping down fans --all with years of accumulated crud. It was sort of fun, except for inhaling. Wished I'd gone down to the garage and gotten a dust mask. But that's neither here nor there.
During the course of events I had to make a few modifications. I had two front fans with motherboard-style power connectors and they were each too short to reach the connector on the motherboard. Worse still, there was only on connector within reach. I did some soldering. (Which reminds me. That Cold Heat soldering iron? I guess if you practice enough, long enough, you might be able to get 'er done with something like that. Me? After a half hour of futzing around I went back to my 100-watt Radio Shack soldering gun, cord and all. It made life much simpler.)
Had to make a Y-connector too. Also no big deal. The Lab of Doom and Pepsi Cola is always stocked with odds and ends of this and that, especially solder and heat-shrink tubing. (By the way, the plug-in power cables for the Antec NeoHe, although they look similar to those found with the NeoPower, aren't interchangeable. That's why I was short a few 4-pin molex-ended connectors. That's why the extra soldering.)
When I was done, I had an AMD-based system with 1GB, a total of 400GB of storage, two optical drives, a floppy!!, a Radeon 9700 graphics card, a WInTV PRV250, and a lot of spare parts --some of which I gave away earlier today, some that have gone into "the bin.".
I really wasn’t sure that the revitalized system would work. Both of them had been sitting around for more months then I cared to think about while I birthed an 840E and 955E systems and tinkered with neighbors’ PCs that had become ill one way or another. (Never let the neighborhood know what you do.) But it did. At least it started to, until Windows told me that the configuration of my system had changed significantly and I had to re-register.
Believe it or not, I can understand the situation. Now that doesn't mean I appreciate it, just understand it. What I didn't understand was why, when I tried to go through the standard Internet registration, I was told I'd exceeded the maximum number of installs. That would be one (1), in case you haven't been keeping track.
Let's put aside the fact that I was abandoning a licensed and registered copy of Windows on the Pentium computer. I wasn't re-installing Windows on this homologated AMD chassis. It was a licensed and registered copy of Windows that told me I had to re-register because of the configuration change, not because I was re-installing (which I wasn't).
Thankfully, the live folk on the service line seemed to have no problem exchanging 40-something character keys with me and everything went back to normal after not too long. But I do this all the time. It's what I do –put things together, take them apart, put them back together differently. I've put up with this silliness for quite a while but it's really starting to weigh me down.
The hidden truth is, you can't register Windows more than once --even if nothing changes. After that first time, if you try to do it again (or if Windows tells you that you must do it again), you can't do it automatically. You must go through the hoops. That's the rules. They're stupid rules. They're wrapped in paranoia. They cause the most annoyance to people who aren't breaking the rules so they can be slightly annoying to the people who are.
I'm getting tired of it. Aren't you? No, don't tell me Linux. That's not an answer. That's just a different set of problems. Something needs to be done about Microsoft and they way it treats people. I don't want it assumed that I'm guilty of doing something wrong simply because some algorithm in Windows thinks I am. I'm supposed to be running the computer. Aren't you?
posted by Bill at 7:34 PM
7 Comments:
I'm sure now that you've suggested it... ;-)
Thanx Tree :p
I always found it to be a pain to do also Bill. I LOVE to swap hardware around and play with stuff! XP Home is plain TERRIBLE, but XP Pro seems more forgiving for some reason...dunno why.
Wait till Vista...8,000 character keys with a fingerprint imbedded activation code and a cup for a urine sample...and that is just to start the install...wait till you see how you have to activate :/
Mike
Does it involve a sheep?
I know--I'm an uncool minority,not having a home internet connection, but, hey!--I paid for Windows, too! It's no darn fun trying to reactivate over the telephone.
Bill R.
Trust me, if I didn't need it for work, I might not either. But phone reg is phun! The people on the other end are obviously not native Englsh speakers but, to their credit, they do amazingly well. (The one last night affected an "English" accent but slipped more than a few times during the key recitation.) It also becomes fairly obvious that they've taken a boat load of grief from callers over MS policy -not their own. I joke with them, make them laugh, it's an overall good time and when we're done I get the feeling they appreciate not being berated and reviled. It's phun.
I've not had that problem. But you're wrong: Linux is not only an answer, it is currently the very best answer, unless you want to run OSX. The only vote Microsoft understands is done with the wallet.
Not to split semantic hairs, but I'd like to believe it's a reply rather than an answer.
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