Over the last week or two, I’ve provided two customers and both of my brothers with Windows 7 Home Premium. My parents’ copy will be arriving today. I had a few appointments, one involving a vague Internet problem that turned out to be a failing wireless adapter, and another regarding a slow desktop PC in desperate need of an upgrade. My grandmother was sent to the hospital Wednesday, where she stayed until Saturday afternoon due to dehydration. She is doing much better now.
The four installs of Windows 7 gave me an opportunity to learn something new. Windows 7 comes as a DVD disc. Two of the systems that received Windows 7 were using Intel Pentium 4 socket 478 processors. The motherboards were from different manufacturers but produced around the same time about four or five years ago. However, whenever I tried to boot to the DVD disc, I would receive a CD error. After swapping in and out several test DVD drives, and successfully booting from a Windows XP CD disc, I came to the realization that booting to DVD isn’t supported on older systems.
In these cases, the best solution that I’ve found is to use Windows XP Home, Professional, and early versions of Media Center Edition (since they’re available on CD) as the launch pad for the installation. After installation, a clean (unformatted) installation can complete successfully. I suspect that the problem also affects Vista DVD discs, but since very few people upgraded to Vista, I never encountered this short-coming.
The appointments that I had since my last blog involved a notebook PC with a vague Internet problem and a desktop in need of a memory upgrade. I brought the notebook home after backing up customer data onsite to the customer’s external hard drive. After connecting it to my KVM and wired network, I proceeded to check the system out for the usual causes of Internet issues. After cleaning up and configuring the system for optimal performance, I returned the system to the customer. I connected to their network and browsed a few pages. The pages loaded quickly. A couple of hours later, I received a call that the system was unable to connect to their wireless network. I returned and reexamined the patient in regard to its wireless connectivity. I examined their wireless network environment and ultimately, came to the realization that the notebook’s wireless adapter was beginning to fail. They wanted to obtain the needed component themselves, I recommended a replacement.
For the desktop customer, I gave the machine a full work up and removed several pieces of malware, optimized settings for performance, and ordered 2 GB of RAM and a Linksys Wireless PCI adapter for the system. The parts arrive today. When I return the system tomorrow, I will examine their network environment and optimize it for best performance, including relocating their wireless router to a more central location. I’ll let you know how it turns out.
Finally, my grandmother was sent to the hospital over Thanksgiving with dehydration. She went to the ER on Wednesday. They ran tests and immediately began to give her fluids. She began to improve immediately. There had been talk that she would be coming home, however, her doctors wanted to keep her in the hospital under observation. On Saturday, she came home. Last night we had our delayed Thanksgiving dinner, thankful that my grandmother was home where she belonged.