So I have a new PC system up-and-running now. There were a couple of bumps in the road, but other than that, everything went smoothly. I bought a Seagate GoFlex External drive on sale at newegg; it was a discontinued 1.5TB model. Seagate now makes GoFlex external drives only in 1, 2 or 3TB versions. I got mine for US$99 to-the-door. I bought it to save my vast MP3 collection, photo collection, and videos and documents; but sometime during transferring all my files to this USB 2 drive I realized that the USB port connection was nothing but an annoying bottleneck. I wondered what was inside the sleek futuristic case. I posted a message at the Seagate forum asking about possibilities of cracking the case and hooking directly to a SATA slot on a motherboard with SATA power clipped from my ATX power supply. My post was avoided like the plague; you couldn't discuss Hatcheting open a fine Seagate product; nobody replied to my post for days. The night before I rebuilt my PC system, I held the external drive in my hands, then went and got a screwdriver and some other small tools. With intrepidity I carefully broke open the case. The case was assembled around the drive so you couldn't plug conventional SATA data or power cables into it; but I could clearly see SATA interface connections when I removed the USB 2 adapter. Long story short; I hacked this puppy open and was rewarded with a Seagate Barracuda green 6Gbps 5900 rpm 1.5 Terabyte hard disk. My two Western Digital SATA Raptors were immediately demoted to drives [D:] and [E:] and I proceeded to build my system on the Barracuda. New problem: my operating system had recently been upgraded from Windows XP. I did this with a Windows 7 upgrade disk. Upon going to re-install my W7 OS, I chose custom install and laid it down on my new 1.5 T Barracuda. I was asked for my Key-code, typed it in, and it was declared invalid on the grounds I could only install W7 as an upgrade and not as a clean install. I had hoped it would recognize a 'System Reserved' partition that still existed over on the WD Raptor where I had W7 before. This didn't work out. Long story short; I had to go through all kinds of hassle with my operating system software, online help guides, Microsoft help agents based in South Asia ...and even a REGEDIT by way of the command prompt in ADMIN mode to finally get my system properly activated again. I was worried there for a while. Now I can relax and look forward to the hours of waiting time for Valve Steam to download all my games again. By the way: I love my new system; and remember, I didn't build it to out-perform my old one... I was forced to build it because my old one broke down.

My ABIT AA8XE FATAL1TY custom built PC from December 2004 has served me well; I bought a Pentium-4 3.2Ghz CPU that year for about US$325. At the time, I noticed there was something called an 'Extreme.' It was also 3.2Ghz, but the cost was over one thousand dollars. I passed on the Core 2 Extreme version because it was prohibitively expensive at the time.

My plain Pentium-4 3.2Ghz CPU was an LGA775 chip, so I looked for a compatible motherboard and quickly fell for the ABIT AA8XE FATAL1TY board. It had an emerging technology known as a PCI-Ex16 Graphic card slot, and lights... little red LED lights all around the motherboard. I was sold!

I picked up an ATI video card that fit that slot, 2GB of DDR2 533 RAM which was considered fast at the time, and a new 500 watt power supply. Oh, and SATA, SATA was new at the time; so I got a Western Digital SATA Raptor 7200 RPM hard drive. SATA... PCI-Ex16 Graphics... LED lights all 'round... I was stoked.

Six months later, gamers on Steam and Gamespot were telling me my CPU wasn't exactly 'smokin.' Well, the Core 2 Extreme CPU had come down in price and everybody else was 'smokin' fast, and I was left complaining about lagging frame-rates in Elder Scrolls: Oblivion.

I got used to my limited system though, and found ways to beat frame-rate issues by skipping the bloated heavy Oblivion MODs and adjusting my screen resolution and video quality settings in-game to something more reasonable. Still, when I got in an Oblivion melee fight with me plus 3 or more NPCs the framerates would lag again. But I still managed to enjoy Oblivion and many other games.

When I recently updated my operating system to Windows 7 my ABIT AA8XE FATAL1TY platform became increasingly unstable; the CMOS beeped and wailed like a siren at start-up more-and-more. I needed to repeatedly boot the PC by pressing the 'power on' button, get a beeping error code, then power it off and try again until it would finally boot into the operating system; but only with THE BIOS re-set to Fail-Safe defaults (and my clock set back to 2004!).

I went to ABIT for an updated BIOS version and was shocked to find a cobweb page and news that ABIT had gone out of business in 2006 or so.

I had heard every combination of POST beeps this board could make; and seen every combination of numerals, letters and decimals that the POST Code Display could flash at me.

Arriving at the conclusion that my computer was not ever going to be Windows 7 compliant, I started to buy components to assemble a new one; and have them all gathered up now.

Today I strip down my FATAL1TY and re-assemble using my new parts:

ASUS P5G41T-M LX PLUS LGA 775 Intel G41 Micro ATX Motherboard

Intel Core 2 Quad Q8200 2.33GHz 4M L2 Cache 1333MHz LGA775 Desktop CPU

Crucial 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1066 (PC3 8500) Dual Channel RAM

Radeon HD 2600 PRO PCI Express x16 video card

..to run the Windows 7 Home Premium operating system in a 32-bit environment

Again, with my old existing power supply and tower case, and anything else I can recycle...

For now, it's off to radio shack to get a three dollar tube of heatsink compound; then I enter DARK TERRITORY with my computer pulled apart on a table for god-knows-how-many-days until I can get a POST beep that brings up Windows 7 again.

Yeah, I know, my new system isn't exactly "Smokin' either .. but it's what I could afford.

Wish Me Luck.

I am fed up with my seven-year-old Abit Fatal1ty AA8XE system. So today I bought several PC hardware components to build a new system. I got a sweet deal on an Intel® Core™2 Quad Q8200 CPU; I know, it isn't anywhere near the best, but it's all I could afford for now. This old LGA775 chip needed a new motherboard, so I got the ASUS P5G41T-M LX PLUS - perhaps the last of it's kind that can be found with the legendary Intel® G41 chipset (tried and proven).

I fortified the new system with 4GB of DDR3 1066 RAM; I only went with four GB because I want to stay in a Windows 7 32-bit environment for now.

Luckily, my old power supply and video card will still work to run this new setup. My old ATX tower has the capability of housing a uATX Form Factor motherboard in it too - so I am saving money by recycling a lot of my older components to get this new system up-and-running.

Hopefully, I will get some better performance and stability out of this new build.

This month I upgraded my operating System from Windows XP to Windows 7 (still 32bit).

Afterwards,I went through close to a hundred PC games in my collection and donated 99 percent of them to a local charity thrift shop. Main reason: not Windows 7 compliant,Now I am down to just under 30 PC games.

I was able to get Sid Maier's Civilization IV up-and-running even though it is not meant for Windows 7; by following a custom install recipe and installing the game to a different 'custom created' folder on a different hard disk than the main operating system. This game, and about five others are being kept in hopes of getting them to work in a W7 environment by custom installing them based on what I learned from the CIV IV lesson.

Youda Sushi Chef is my new game-of-choice for unwinding, relaxing, or just doing next-to-nothing (minesweeper, solitaire type of thing). Previously it was Burger Shop 2. Check both these games out for winding down, or just plain simple fun.

Really getting in to Skyrim right now; but I am convinced I need to custom build a new PC from the motherboard up again; I'm not spending $1200 bucks on a new PC just to play Skyrim, so I will be satisfied to play it at the lowest quality video settings for now ...and I can forget about mods too.

In an attempt to sort things out on my 'Games List' which is now at about 100 games, I am beginning the process of going in and rating each game that I have played.

So the deal is this: if I have played it and still own the CD disc, then I will rate it and have it in my 'Games List.' If I own it but have not installed and played it yet, then, of course there will be no rating.

Games that, in the past, have been purchased, installed and played, and then un-installed and had their disc(s) thrown away will not be rated because they will not appear on my owned games list. (and I am trying to forget about them)

This whole idea of going in and rating games I've played will be primarily to help me as I go through my list looking for the next game I wish to install. I will be able to sort my 'Games List' by my rating scores, and then search through only the ones with no rating from me yet; then decide which I will install and try out next.

I am being very careful in going about rating the games I've already played. Here is a comment I left at Soapbox about an article that boasted the Top 10 do's and don'ts of reviewing/rating games here at GameSpot.com:

Great article. I agree that your ideas will help users post better reviews, and I commend you on your effort. Now I want to add my own rule number eleven:
When giving a game a user score; let's say you want to give it a 6.5, because you honestly feel the game merits a 6.5. But then you see that several other users gave it ratings between 2 and 4, so you throw out logic and just think about averaging out that overall user rating to get it closer to your 6.5; so you give it a 10 to affect the overall.
Rule #11 - give a user score that is what you think the game merits, not one that you think will affect the overall average.
In my opinion, people wildly anderratically throwing 1's and 10's around in attempts to affect the overall average user rating is degrading the GameSpot user rating system.

So... off I go to slide a few more ratings bars on games I've played. I won't do them all in one session though.

The other day I bought a PC game. It is a restaurant management game where you serve endless waves of customers who order from items on your menu. Fine; the game is fun, and it has re-play-ability; just delete and create a new username to go at it again.

There were two demo games on the CD as well. I installed one of them; it was another management click-fest game, and I had 60 minutes of playtime to try it out. It was fun, and if I see it in the bargain-bin I may buy it if it is under $7.

Here's the deal though; when that 60 minute demo ended, my screen flickered and then went black, while at that same precice instant my speakers crackled and popped. I will swear that an arc of static electricity swept across my monitors face!

Hmm... no problem, I guess. That must be how demos end. So I go to dial up and check my email (yes, I am on 56K dial-up). But instead, I get a message that there is no dial-tone; error '608' or something.

After running every Windows troubleshooter and Norton diagnostic, I arrive at the conclusion that my PCI Modem has been fried. Hardware problem. It's never a Hardware problem! Iguarantee you your problem is always software related.

So, against my better judgement, I open my PC tower case and yank my PCI modem card. I dust it and inspect it. Hmm... not really much to it. I vacuum around inside my tower and pick dust-bunnies out of various fan blades with a Q-tip cotton swab.

Upon getting ready to replace my pci modem card, I notice that there is another PCI slot on my motherboard; PCI COM port #4. (I had just taken my modem out of PCI COM port #3).

So on a hunch, I stick the modem into number-four instead; I slap everything back together and reboot. Presto! I'm back in business; my modem is working fine again.

Weird. So did that darn Demo fry my COM port?