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AnchorDesk

David Coursey
From hard-drive hell to a Windows wipeout

David Coursey
Executive Editor, AnchorDesk
Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2004
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When last we left my poor Compaq Armada M700 notebook, it had been sidelined by a bad hard drive. I set aside that repair to set up a new eMachines desktop for my assistant, Rachel. While I was at it, I decided I might as well upgrade the memory on both machines, along with my 17-inch iMac.

How to switch disks
If you're swapping hard drives, like David, and need to move your data from one disk to another, Drive Image will do the trick.
I'VE HAD SO much fun with all these various repairs and upgrades that I want to share with you my continuing tale of woe.

Specifically, the Armada still isn't working, at least not with the new 60GB IBM/Hitachi drive I bought. I'm pretty sure the machine's built-in CD-ROM drive is toasted. But that's not fatal, because once the hard drive works I can use a USB CD-ROM when I need one.

So on Thursday, I'll be at my friend Big Ernie's and we'll use either Drive Image or one of the EZ Gig Universal hard drive upgrade kits from Apricorn.

Both will help clone the 3GB drive we now have working to the 60GB drive I'd like to use in the machine. The software-only solution is more complex, while the Apricorn hardware/software solution is the sort of tool you want your neighbor to have. With the Apricorn running more than $150 a pop, you'll want to clone a decent number of drives to recoup the expense.

Ernie swears by Apricorn. So does Small Business Server guru Susan Bradley, who recommended an under-$100 version as a solution to my problem. Susan says she uses the Apricorn EZ Upgrade kits fairly often and considers them a good value.

For all this work, at the end of the project I'll probably be left with a good hand-me-down machine, as I've sorta grown attached to this Fujitsu Tablet PC, the T Series Lifebook.

AS FOR MY OTHER projects, I noticed a problem with the eMachine after a few hours of use, when it became so bogged down that it wouldn't do anything. Since I'd just purchased the computer the day before, I called eMachines technical support. I was told--nicely but firmly--that, since I had installed XP Pro onto the box, I'd have to go to Microsoft for support.

eMachines supports only the OS that is delivered on the machine, which in this case was XP Home. By upgrading the OS, which was necessary if I wanted to connect the machine to my server, I'd forfeited most of the company's free technical support.

Eventually, I got a manager on the phone who told me that, no, eMachines doesn't test its hardware for XP Pro compatibility. He was, however, willing to offer two suggestions: either I'd been infected by a virus or something else had messed up one or more of the XP Pro operating system files.

Since the virus checker and network firewall had been on the entire time I'd had the machine running, I didn't buy the virus idea. But a messed-up XP installation was certainly a possibility, given that XP arbitrarily renamed my DVD drive from E: to J: and then started obstinately looking for files on drive E:.

Another clue came from checking Task Manager, where I found a process--svchost.exe--grabbing 99 percent of processor cycles, leaving essentially nothing for any other software I wanted to run. Svchost.exe is part of the guts of Windows, and if you stop it, your machine will give you a minute to shut down all your apps before it reboots.

The tech guy's suggestion was to use the OS's restore utility to revert the machine to its pre-upgrade state and, once XP Home was back up, to do the XP Professional upgrade all over. That solved the problem, and the eMachine has been running nicely ever since. While I was out shopping I did, however, purchase a second 512KB RAM, just the thing for an assistant who tends to leave a bunch of apps open at once.

THE EASIEST PART of this story is--you guessed it--the iMac. While it takes expensive notebook memory, installation is easy: Turn the machine on its side, loosen the four stay-put screws in the base, remove the base, install the memory in a slot on the bottom interior surface, and close the box. Elapsed time: 5 minutes, which included finding a screwdriver.

(Actually, the tool I grabbed wasn't just a screwdriver. It's also a Torx driver, a dip-switch setter, ballpoint pen, knife--28 tools in all. I'm talking about the Victorinox Cybertool, a Swiss Army knife outfitted with the tools needed to complete most PC-related repairs. A new version has 34 tools, adding pliers, among other things, to the 28 tools I have.

I normally keep the Cybertool attached to the key fob in my briefcase, where it has already passed through a hand search by airport security at least once. If you ever find yourself needing to fix a computer but don't want to carry a whole toolkit around with you, the Cybertool is an excellent idea. List price is $60 but significant discounts are available.)

Back to the iMac: I'm always amazed at how little memory it takes to run Mac OS X. This machine had only 256MB RAM and, while it runs a good bit faster with the additional 512MB RAM, its performance wasn't so bad to begin with. But added memory is always a good thing and the occasional burps the computer suffered from trying to do too much at once have been resolved.

So that's the update from my computer workshop, where the eMachine and the Mac are working fine and, though the Armada remains on the disabled list, its prognosis looks good. Stay tuned.

What do you think? What kinds of problems have you been having lately? How have you solved them? TalkBack to me! 

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