A heart transplant surgeon I am not. And, pain in the ass as it was, I have finally finished the final sutures on a difficult hard drive transplant. My main computer (a Pentium 4 on a Dell Optiplex 5100 motherboard which won’t even accept a Pentium D) has become so out of date that I am constantly screaming about delays and inexplicable update problems with every last little thing.
So…. I bought a used but much more modern motherboard (a Dell Optiplex 760 in a case, barebones style), installed a relatively modern CPU (a core 2 quad Q6600), and finally decided that it was worth the trouble of moving my old drive from “computer” A to “computer” B. While it is a challenge in the sense that any game is a challenge, it has taken two hellish days to configure everything so that it works. I have worked my way around three stubborn BSODs. (That’s Blue Screen of Death.) But it works now, and seems like new. A Windows XP Repair Install will get you part of the way there, but I discovered that there was no way to install my old XP SP2 software into the 760 without getting the BSOD during the install. So I had to move and configure the drive — first to an Optiplex 745 board, then to a 755, and finally to the 760.
It can be done, because I did it, but it was a real pain in the ass, and I would not recommend it.
If I see one more Blue Screen of Death, I may join it!
Comments
7 responses to “Overcome by blue screens of death”
LOL… glad you got it worked out!
If I never see a blue screen of death again it will be too soon.
DEA is probably behind it…
Every time I read stories like this one I wonder: do you value your time at all? How many hours have you burned using obsolete equipment?
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Actually, I don’t have as much time as I would like, but I found the process challenging and educational. I had more fun making my old hard drive (which is essentially my old computer) work in a new modern board than I would playing video games.
Plus, it beats the grim alternative posed by a perfectly working computer.
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