After almost two long months of not having my computer, Jeff finally returned my computer to me this weekend. Procrastinating most of it to the last second, he managed to force it to work by formatting the main partition and slapping a fresh installation of XP Pro on here (this is actually one of the early MCE computers and also has an untouched system restore partition). However, I can't seem to figure out why he left the computer with three partitions (XP Pro, Blank, and System Recovery). I can't seem to think of a reason for an empty RAW partition. The reason as to why he left the System Recovery partition alone and didn't: 1) Boot it and execute a full data recovery instead of messing around with the partitions and wasting time on creating his own partitions and installing a new version of XP on there; or 2) just wipe it out as well if he's not going to use it ...

Anyway, apart from my confusion I'm quite thrilled that I have the computer back; As well as thankful. Supposedly he's going to call me with in the next hour or so and answer my questions. Hopefully I'll be able to boot the recovery partition and get MCE back along with the free software and drivers it came with. Right now I am missing a good bit of useful software and some important drivers (like my DVD R/RW drive seems to only register as a CD drive to Windows), so I'm hoping this can be resolved with in the next week or so (if not I guess I'll have to live with out 'em... Yet another reason to buy a new computer).

Needless to say, I'm anxious for his phone call so he and I can resolve these issues and get on with our lives. Thankfully I'll also be able to utilize my server tower properly now and equip it with its appropriate software (XAMPP ftw?).

My inability to utilize the built-in USB ports on this computer have made it difficult to use important hardware (such as my external hard drive, and USB keyboard and mouse); It would be much appreciated if those of you who have extra PCI USB cards lying around would be so kind as to ship one off my way
Until I talk to Jeff I'm not sure if he has one I can use, but I know he said that the one he plugged in to work with had to be removed for his own personal use. This leaves me with out USB capabilities which is definitely unacceptable for an extended amount of time (It'll pretty much drive me insane ).

Having said that I'm going to go use my server tower since it has USB capabilities (it also comes packed with 128MBs or RAM and 900MHz of processor speed! (those Celeron processors are beastly )).

I assume by "beastly" you mean Celeron chips are "horribly fail". On another note, Newegg has PCI USB cards for $13:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815106007

I should mention that my server is currently a 733Mhz celeron, and yeah at least get a PIII in there its a huge performance boost even if they have the same clock speed. and more ram would probably help too but I won't go there.

Check the size of the empty RAW partition. If it is like 8mb or so, that is just the windows partitioner being a failure (no surprise) - and is normal.

"tower"
"early MCE computers"


this wouldn't happen to be the one I fixed over remote desktop 2 or 3 years ago, would it?


also, not sure why you'd run a WIMP (or WAMP/XAMPP) server over LAMP, particularly on older hardware like a PIII.

I can't remember if you've ever fixed one of my computers for me, but if so then it probably is.

My server tower will be running Ubuntu soon (once I'm sure that the tower I just got back will hold up until I can get a new computer, lol).

After that I'll add LAMPP for local and personal use, as well as other simple servers (including SAXJAX if you (elfy) ever get around to actually sending me the new version )... That'll pretty much be the sole use of my server tower.

Lately I've been having some trouble with the tower I just got back (I've really thought about naming them so I don't have to continue to explain them and then reference to them... quite an inconvenience if I don't ). Anyway, from what I can find out; This guy Jeff pretty much waited until the last second to do everything and left quite a mess...

When I first boot up it brings me to the standard DOS boot selector menu with three "Microsoft Windows XP Professional" items. The first brings me to where I am right now (boots WinXP Pro) and the last two give me a message saying that I'm missing a certain file required to boot windows.

After getting in to Windows it seems to load up extremely quickly. In less then 30 seconds from the time I get to the boot selector menu I can be in Windows. Immediately after I finally got my serial keyboard and mouse to work (as you may remember from previous blogs, the whole reason this mess happened was because my built-in USB ports quit working) I opened My Computer and saw that there were three drive letters displayed. All three were partitions to my main hard-drve but for some reason I recalled only have two partitions before

I look at the properties of each and find that my RECOVERY partition is still there and fully functional (a big plus, this way I can find a way to boot from it and then completely wipe out the computer again if absolutely needed), my normal partition, and for some reason I had a new RAW partition with 0KBs on it. Confused as to why this was there, I marked it on my list of questions to ask him when we finally got the chance to talk (which still hasn't happened by the way) and continued to browse and explore. In the main partition I found two folders... My old WINDOWS directory, and a new WINXP directory. The WINXP directory contained the new XP Pro he installed, whereas the old WINDOWS directory still had all my old WinXP MCE files in it... (odd...). After browsing around for a while I noticed that my E drive was only a CD Drive, and not a DVD R/RW + CDR/RW Combo drive. I downloaded BearShare and dried to use its burner but it didn't seem to work. I continued to get errors. One when I added files to the burn list, and one after I first started the burn process. After the CD came out it seemed to show data on the disc but when I put it back in the data on the CD was unreadable (skipped the finalizing process?). I tried looking for new drivers but I couldn't find any for the model I have, and although it says "DVD R/RW + CDR/RW Combo Drive" in my list of its drivers, I can't seem to get it to burn or act like a DVD drive.

My list of problems is building and I'm starting to wish this guy just ran the recovery partition and then installed the new driver (probably would've been the best thing, but oh well...). If I had the tools to actually get the serial ports to work in the first place then I might have been able to do everything myself and it probably would've turned out better then it seems it did (however, I don't want to underrate the level of difficulty this project was for Jeff, even though he waited until the last minute and even arrived late to drop it off )

With out USB I'm starting to get annoyed. I think I'll just order that $10 USB adapter from NewEgg instead of waiting for him to call me, because this is getting to be ridiculous