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me vs. xp

April 6th, 2006 | tech

From the last post we all know the basis of the war…Compaq was recently called back into internerd duty and needed the current updates, including SP2, which was providing a few problems. Well over the timeframe of Tuesday and Wednesday the battle continued.

An email had been sent to microsoft tech support earlier, and to be honest I was expecting nothing. After a couple email replies verifying that microsoft actually received the email another email arrived in the inbox. Microsoft tech Shania sent a long detailed email of different options to re-download and install the prized SP2. Tuesday night PDF was brought in to translate the email and the process was started.

SP2 was re-downloaded from a new direct link provided by Shania. Then, by Shania’s suggestions, PDF restarted Compaq and kept pressing f8 which kicked it into safe mode. SP2 was then installed in safe mode. The computer was shut down, knowing the next test would be the crucial part.

Compaq was powered up. Tension was high as everyone, all two of us, was half expecting to see some kind of an “error” jump onto the screen. To my surprise nothing out of the ordinary happened. It was wonderful. It was now late and I had a drive ahead of me so Compaq was shut down and the battle would be put on hold.

Wednesday night the fight continued. I had witnessed Compaq start up without a hitch the night earlier…could it do it again? I plugged in, pressed power, and it started up just like normal. Brilliant! Now for test two: continue with the next set of Microsoft updates.

There were 17 more updates coming to Compaq. Once again before I could get to it over ambitious auto-updater went to work. Before too long all 17 were downloaded and waiting to start the install process. Just to be sure I didn’t lose anything I finished my online work before the process. Once the browser closed the update icon was clicked and installs started.

One by one updater listed off each program being ’successfully installed’. After number 17 updater called for a restart now or later. I clicked restart and could only hope Compaq came back one final time. And…yes! Everything worked as planned. I checked windows updater one last time, but it couldn’t even find any more suggested downloads. Compaq was back up to snuff.

Finally with windows out of the way Compaq could seek out some ‘fun’ programs. First to be installed was Google Earth. Then came the update for FireFox. There was another update for something in there, but I honestly can’t remember what it was.

In any case, Compaq is back and better than ever. The war is over. Sure, there’s still the clean-up afterwards…the hard drive is a mess with files all over the place. Some organization would do wonders. Some files still need to be transferred over from big brother HP. And of course there’s the next download challenge of FIFA ‘06. But for now things are great and we (me and Compaq) couldn’t be happier.

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