More computer woes

Got a couple of used Gigabyte GA-M62P-S3 mainboards with AM2 CPUs for cheap this week. These are high end socket AM2 boards that can take AM2+ and even AM3 CPUs (with the beta BIOS). They were also made in Taiwan (unlike the recent new Gigabyte AM2+/AM3 boards I just bought which were made in China. I had preferred Gigabyte because 3 years ago when I was in Taiwan, they were still making boards in Taiwan, not China. Sad, they've fallen into the China fever of other Taiwanese companies.

I took out the Asus AM2+ mainboard I had running Vista Home Premium and swapped in the Gigabyte. Swapped the Athlon X2 5000+ Black Edition CPU from the Asus and put it into the Gigabyte and took the Athlon 3500+ from the Gigabyte and put it into the Asus. Then I put the Asus board into the compact mini tower that Tom Shabbits gave me a few years ago. Got the Asus board running Ubuntu Linux 10.04 relatively easily.

Next, tried to get the already installed Vista running on the Gigabyte board. Kept on crashing. So, I booted into safe mode and let the drivers install that way. It was installed and I even could run internet with Safe Mode (with networking). However, no matter what, it wouldn't boot into Vista regular mode. So, unplugged the 500 Gig drive that had Vista installed and put in a brand new WD 1000 Gig. Tried to install Vista. Hung. Checked the size of the drive in the BIOS and it showed up as only 33 Mbyte! Had to do a BIOS update. So, fired up the basement computer and downloaded the latest stable BIOS and put it on a flash drive. Then flashed the BIOS on the Gigabyte board and now it says the drive is 1000 Gbyte. Tried to install Vista again. Hung again. Unplugged the PS/2 mouse and plugged in a USB mouse. Tried to install Vista again. Got the Blue Screen of Death (BSOD - now that I think of it, what an appropriate acronym - an overdose of BS!). So, now I'm firing up Memtest 86+ to see if there is anything wrong with the 2 Gig stick of DDR2 667 MHz I have in the computer. I think I'll plug in a USB keyboard next time too.

Now I know why people don't like Windows. However, I won't buy Mac for various reaons ($$ being a big one). It's a lot easier to get Mac running because it's a know quantity (only one hardware vendor). It's quite amazing how Linux (Ubuntu say) can boot from a CD and run on a great variety of computers. Hopefully, I won't be wasting too much time tonight ....

Still have the problems with Windows 7 Pro being unstable on my "main computer" (Phenom 9850 with 6 gig memory). ARGH!

Here's a link I just found of others who had problems with the 2010 June 24 updates. Not much for solution though, but looks like it's a MS stupdity problem. Here's another post related to QuickBooks that identifies two updates that are causing the problem (I'm guessing)! The problem is from 2 MS updates released on 6/22,KB977354 andKB976576.