Finally!

Ok, here's how I finally got Windows on my computer.

In Ubuntu, I was able to apply the SP2 update to the files I had copied from the CD using Wine. The problem was with burning it back onto another CD. I extracted the Windows boot image, but it wasn't in a normal format, and as much as I searched on the internet, I couldn't find a Linux tool that could do it. I burned a few duds that contained the data but weren't bootable. The next thing to try was running trial versions of Nero or Roxio with Wine. Neither would run with Wine, so it was finally time to install Windows XP on my laptop. I got back to the point I was at before, and then got the trial version of Roxio. But guess what? The trial version doesn't allow the option I needed. I tried Nero and found out the same thing. So it was back to the drawing board. I finally discovered a program called nLite, which does everything for you. I downloaded it and had my slipstreamed CD within fifteen minutes.

So I went to install Windows with my new CD...and I still got the blue screen of death. The error was different, though. I wrote down the important information (some hex numbers) and then started searching around on the internet. I finally found out what the problem is on the Dell support website. My motherboard settings were set to "RAID on", and I needed to switch it to "RAID autodetect/ATA". When I went to change it in my motherboard, I noticed it said that switching could decrease performance, even if I only had one disk (if you don't know, RAID is a method of using multiple disks to either increase performance or backup data). It's interesting that they had this option set for Linux, but it doesn't work with Windows. I wonder if I should try to get a RAID driver and switch back to it. Anyway, once I had changed the setting, I was able to install Windows without a problem. Unfortunately, not everything worked when I booted it up.

The first thing I noticed was that I had no network devices. I noticed later that I also had no sound. The problem was obviously with drivers, but upon getting to Dell's driver download page I couldn't figure out which I needed to get out of the about a hundred that were listed. They were categorized, but there were still something like 5 for networking and 8 for audio. At this point, I was using my laptop to look for the drivers with the intention to transfer them with a USB flash drive. I decided it would be easier if I took my wireless card out of my old computer and put it in this one. I did that and then started running Windows Update. There was an updated driver for my wireless card that I selected to have downloaded, but when got to installing it, there was a flash of BSOD and my computer restarted. Windows booted up, BSOD after a few seconds, computer restarts, repeat. I got into safe mode and uninstalled the wireless card. Rebooted and still had the problem. I tried rolling back the driver, but it said it didn't have any previous versions stored. Instead of spending who knows how long figuring out how to fix this, I just reinstalled Windows. After this, I was very frustrated and just wanted to get things working. I went to Dell's support website and was able to chat online with a technician who eventually gave me the drivers I needed. Look forward to another post containing this chat session. So after getting the drivers, everything works, and I am being careful to not let Windows download that updated driver. I had a similar problem with my old computer, where it always wanted to download an updated driver for my sound chip, but it would always just break sound and I'd have to roll back.

So hopefully this will be the last of these types of posts for a while, as I can now enjoy a working computer. On another note, I have 2 other posts I want to do, and I'm thinking of a 3rd. I'll try to space them out, maybe save some for tomorrow. But expect more posts in the near future.