Misc. Ramblings

For the first time, I powered on my new media center PC last night. All the hardware seemed to be okay so I started installing Windows MCE 2005. That's when it all went wrong and this became a religious experience.

My first problem was partioning the drive. I've been using Linux for so long that I forgot that, if you want to partition the drive in Windows, it's best to do it before installing.  What I've done in the past is to boot off of a DOS disk, run fdisk to create the partitions (without formatting), and then run the Windows install.

If you don't, Windows XP, bless all Microsoft programmers, will gladly partition your drive, but not format both partitions. Then, perhaps because I have my DVD burner on ATA primary and my hard drive on SATA primary, assigned drive G: to my hard drive, not C: as you would think it should be. Sigh.

During the install, it asked me to insert the CD for Windows XP Service Pack 2. Well, bless all Microsoft executives, I didn't happen to have a copy of SP2 handy and why should I? Why shouldn't it be included in the Windows install itself? Nowhere in the scant documentation included does it say you have to have SP2 on CD before you can install Windows MCE. Yes, I know, MCE is an OEM edition so, perhaps, MS has double secret instructions just for OEMs. But I still don't see why, when MCE already comes on two CDs, bless all Microsoft accountants, why I have to have SP2 on a separate CD.

Then, since you have to install the Nvidia drivers for sound, video, and network card before they will work (just like you have to with all the Intel motherboards I've ever installed) and, bless all Microsoft programmers, you can't install those drivers until after Windows is completely installed, Windows can't get sound, video, or the network connection working. Although the default video driver at least allows to see what you are doing, there's no sound and no network access.

What is even stranger, during the install, Windows tried to use the "1394" firewire bus as a network card. You can even look at it in Device Manager and the firewire bus will be identified as a network card.  No amount of trying to get Windows to switch to the built in network card has, so far, worked. Sigh.

Since Windows tries to use the firewire bus as a network card and, bless all Microsoft programmers,  it refuses to use any other, networking is not. Working, that is. This is even after installing the Nvidia driver for their built in network card it still doesn't work. I may try disabling firewire in the BIOS to see if that will help. I did try disabling and then uninstalling the firewire network card in Windows Device Manager but that didn't seem to help. Sigh.

Now, it is entirely possible that this problem is a result of Nvidia's network driver since I see on various forums all kinds of problems with their NICs. But maybe not. I can't tell at this point what the problem is.  What I may also do is disable both firewire and the built in network card in the BIOS and just use a PCI Ethernet card. Sigh.

Lord willing and the 'crick don't rise, I will try installing again tonight and will let you folks know how things went tomorrow.

Aloha!