Tuesday, March 09, 2004

Upgrading to Windows XP Professional

Two days ago, I bought a Maxtor 80 GB Harddisk IDE with External Casing at Low Yat Plaza. Considering my office pc and my own personal notebook does not come with a CDRW, I thought having a harddisk with me could help me solve the problem of having to transfer huge amount of files (large file size) in between these two machines. The volume would be so high even a few thumbdrive sticks won't do the job. Secondly, the harddisk could very well backup my digital photos, videos, source codes, portfolios and misc files.

Ideally I would like to get a notebook harddisk (2.5") which is slim, highly portable, does not require external power supply and simply because it looks great. Nevertheless, the drawback was that the price is a couple hundred more and that the capacity is just a quarter of its 3.5" counterpart. Aikz. Due to my frugality attitude and judgement after looking at my bank balance, I decided to get the huge, chunky, heavy and laden with power supply cables alternative.

I began to do preparations of backing up my files from my Compaq Presario 1503AP notebook into this harddisk before proceeding to deal with the change of Operating System. After about 30 minutes, I have backup all my important files. It's just about 5 GB. Took many deep breaths and tried to muster all my strength and courage to upgrade my existing Windows XP Home Edition to Windows XP Professional.

You see, I had many bad experiences dealing with reformatting and change of OS. I still remember vividly circa 2002 when I reformat my pc and install Windows 2000. It was such a horrendous experience that left me agonizing without the use of pc for nearly a week and the thought that my pc has kapoot. Ironically I was attending a MCSE course at that time. The materials that I studied and the thick reference books does not help either. The stupid 4 boot disks are nonsense. Nonetheless, I have successfully saved back my pc and accomplished my mission of installing windows 2000 after getting advices from multiple friends, tried with different windows 2000 CDs, tried with many sets of 4 setup boot discs and 1 setup boot disk from EdMeN.

Back to the previous part. I clicked on the upgrade button and there it goes. My Windows XP Home Edition is in the process of upgrading into Windows XP Professional. I can only cross my fingers and hope that it goes well without a single glitch. I was squinting at the LCD throughout the entire process of about 40 minutes with hope that the progress bar would go on and on and on. No error message, no error message please was all that I was thinking throughout. Then bam! Popup a message to ask me to provide a file. Some (*.inf) file related to PPP over Ethernet stuff. I can't find it and got no choice but to click on cancel. Luckily the installing process resumes. Finally after 40 minutes, all goes well and I felt very much in relief after creating much anxiety and self inducing stress. It was a bet that I could not afford to lose.

So why in the blue hell do I wanna go through this tormenting process. You see, Windows XP Home Edition does not support IIS which I bloody need it to do my ASP. What a bunch of crap!