formatted, and with Windows XP installed on it. Then I applied Service
Pack 3, defragmented it, and then began getting it acquainted with my
thumbdrives and USB externals, quickly getting the installs for software
I want on the thing.
Thing is, I needed drivers for a few things. It does not have a high
speed USB 2.0 host controller, so that's a card I will have to add to
it. Hopefully onboard and a PCI card of USB ports can live together and
not need the on-board USB host disabled in the BIOS.
I did a lot of searching on the web for ATI Rage 128 Ultra drivers, and
as it turned out, Dell's support website had the drivers for the
Dimenion 4300 with XP. Even though the case has a product key for
Windows 2000 Pro SP4, there ain't no way I'm going to let it touch my
thumbdrives. If I have to ask a friend to help me get a WinXP key, I'll
do it.
I also needed the drivers for the Soundblaster Live card. Again, I used
a self-extractable program from Dell's website. I found out the
Soundblaster card (CT4780) is an OEM version of the same thing sold
retail by Creative Labs, so the only drivers that would work are those
Dell had supplied.
A problem I ran into with the audio - I thought I was going to have to
buy another sound card. When I ran the one driver install thing, the
card still did not show up in the Device Manager. So I ran the Creative
Labs' installer for my card (they surprisingly had it somewhere), and it
couldn't detect it. Hmm.. Checked BIOS setup, no not disabled. So I
thought Why Not Move it To Another Slot? I have one slot free, so let's
put it there. Booted up, and XP found my card, installed the drivers,
restarted, and I now have a volume knob and I have sound off this thing.
So either the card got knocked loose when it was pitched in the trash
where it was rescued, or that slot is bad. I'll find out when I get
around to adding that high speed USB 2.0 host controller card.
If there are other drivers, I'll get them when I need them.
I had a problem with InfraRecorder being unable to detect the active
character set. A setting in the Regional thingy where it lets you allow
programs to use other input languages had to be turned off. I wanted
Japanese language support installed, but if it causes Infrarecorder to
display odd messages like that, I'll turn it off.
So when I finally had the system to this point, I used InfraRecorder to
burn a Support CD (about 398 MB) of the stuff I pulled onto its HD to
get things set up - just to check how well the CD burner worked. It
could have had dust on the laser or anything, but the CD I made verified
OK. I had to wipe dust off the CD tray. (grr)
SO... need a DVD burner, 16G thumbdrive (maybe Sandisk or Kingston), and
a high speed USB 2.0 host controller card. Things work OK right now,
just if I want to use my USB Video capture box, it needs the higher data
speed.
OH yeah, I got the chance to check out a friend's laptop with Vista on
it. I was able to remove practically all traces of LimeWire on it after
booting into Safe Mode, as well as shutting down some services that were
causing problems. I noticed 4 items in the startup tab in the Config
utility that just screamed VIRUSES to me, so I'll have to install and
run Malwarebytes' removal tool as soon as I can. Internet Exploder had a
ton of "helper" bars installed, and I was able to go through and disable
a bunch of the really bad ones (nearly all!).
When you get idiot kids using a computer and they go and download and
install things they really shouldn't - just because their Friends say
it's cool you should try this, it doesn't make any difference if Windows
Defender or any anti-virus software is installed at all. You defeat the
purpose of it keeping the bad stuff out. These people will get a lecture
on why their computer needed my help and why They Need to Cut It OUT!
You download stuff and run it, then wonder why your computer creeps to a
crawl and you get popup ads. Gee! I wonder!
It may mean Job Security, but really if they realized what harm they
were doing, they'd wise up.
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