Suddenly.. no POST

[DaveB]

Ahh.. another pipe man

Yes.. my toyroom is a bit.. er, overcrowded. Thank goodness you couldn't see more as I've now used up most of the floor too. I can move my chair about 3" one way and about a foot the other way before hitting obstructions

I tried briars years ago and couldn't get on with them I'm afraid. A pity as they're much cheaper than Meerschaums. There are 2 on the desk.. one I'm currently using (on the pipe rest) and the other laying flat which is my dad's. He didn't use it much and I found it in a box while clearing stuff out at their house (with another even less used) so cleaned them up and use them to smoke the 13 packets of ALSBO Black he left after he died. Bless him.. even though he'd pretty much stopped smoking his pipes, he continued to buy pipe tobacco so I use his pipes to smoke it

Aren't pipe smokers nice chaps

ATB
DaveB

[Molyned]

I do so agree Dave - I've always found that all we pipe-smokers are most urbane friendly types with never a wrong word to say to anyone.
Except the wife of course - give as good as you get, I say.
Cheers
Dave M(oly)

[Garry Russell]

My workspace/bedroom is a little busy

Funny, only recently I found something in there I'd forgotten I had, so long since I've seen it I even forgot what it was called.

From what I've managed to search on the net it seems to be called 'a floor'

[DaveB]

That reminds me so much of me, I might have typed it myself

BTW.. I type this on the 'no POST' pc.. she's up and running Now.. all that remains is for me to kill it again and put Win7 on

While I'm here.. does anyone know what will happen if I disconnect the current XP drive.. put Win7 on a new clean drive then reconnect the XP drive?? Is Win7 clever enough to realise there are two OS's trying to load and thus offer me a dual boot screen (that is.. give me the option of loading one or t'other)?

Garry.. the floor?? Did it have pristine carpet underneath?? The bits I can see are a cross between Labrador and pipe tobacco.. perfect conditions for computing!
ATB
DaveB

[Effoh]

Dave,

I think if you leave XP drive connected, add the clean drive and then install 7 it will try to upgrade XP. If you opt instead for a clean install on the new drive, it should give the dual boot. Let me have a rummage on t'internet and I'll get back to you.

Rgds,

Colin

Edit : here you go Dave http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/80 ... -7-xp.html

[DaveB]

Cheers Colin

Here was me thinking all was fine and it is.. well, 99% fine. For some reason, my wireless is suddenly intermittent so I'm back on the 3200 until I've found the cause
EDIT:.. sorted, I think One of the many pages of properties I'd missed that defaults to some format or other that was obviously not required by my steam powered BB
ATB
DaveB

[ianhind]

Quick question - why do you want to dual boot? Ok, so it avoids the need to install everything on Win7 since you can just go back to XP for those things.

I admit to having done just what you are going to do since Win7 seemed such a big step but it wasn't long before I abandoned WinXP (too much hassle trying to remember which one to boot!). That's when it got tricky since removing XP from dual boot was not straightforward - you risk nothing booting up if it goes wrong. IIRC you are installing the Win7 boot info on the XP drive so they are rather entangled!

I ended up re-installing Win7 when i abandoned WinXP to make things simple again.

Bottom line: I agree with the the strategy so you can get used to Win7 but beware of the future possibility of re-installing Win7 to tidy up the boot sectors. While you are running both, check which programs will not run in 64-bit Win7 (the older, the more likely). Between my wife and I , we have several of those so we run them under WInXp in VirtualBox.

Ian

[DaveB]

Hiya Ian

Yes.. getting rid of a possible dual boot situation did cross my mind too. I remember having this setup with 2 much older versions of Windows and it was not straight forward to get rid of one when I was comfortable with the other

In theory, as I don't intend adding more hardware to WinXP as it stands.. I can simply disconnect the drive and connect the new one then let it do it's thing. I've two 500gb drives under win XP.. the first having the OS and a pile of other crap (it's partitioned as C and E.. E having FS9) and the second has FSX and is used as an overflow/rubbish bin. Will leaving the FSX(F) drive complicate the Win7 install? I can do without odd drive letter allocations! Easier I guess to disconnect both current drives and leave the new one to take Win7 and sort it's life out?

ATB
DaveB

[ianhind]

I think you can probably leave both XP drives in there and just tell Win7 to install to the empty drive. But then again it may not want to play if it finds WinXP. The FSX drive should be ok and you can re-assign drive letters easily enough afterwards anyway. But you are going to have to re-install FSX in Win7 anyway so I assume the "FSX drive" is where all your data/scenery files are.

Ian

[DaveB]

Good question Ian

Sadly.. FSX is spread all over the darned shop. VFR Photo is on C (it was trendy to have them on a separate drive at one point.. still might be for all I know ) Not sure where my Earthsim trees are My VFRPhoto disc 4 is corrupt (you may remember my Duxford WaterWorld post some time ago) though I can borrow a good one..
It begs the question, do I really need FSX again? For how much I use it, the obvious answer is no! Reloads are a chore aren't they and under Win7.. the files will probably sod off to some unknown directory. Do I really want to be doing this to myself

Well.. the answer has to be yes. I've not been on a current OS since Vista came and blighted many folks systems (fortunately, not mine) so I guess I must make the effort to get to Win7 before it's successor appears. In little over a week, my poor XP3200 has moved from IE6 to IE7 and now it's on IE8. I've got a 1TB external coming in the next few days (ordered it last night after a couple of beers!) so I may wait until IT arrives before taking the plunge. With the FSX drive intact, I can then copy C and E drives onto the external then say goodbye to XP.. on this pc anyway

This is all too much for my addled brain
ATB
DaveB