Not a normal reboot by any means but actually a new drive and starting from the fresh Operating System and rebuilding as well a performing a tech-xersism to rid the machine of evil bits and bytes. I had to reinstall everything to get back to where I was before my drive and OS decided to get sick or possessed by ancient evil spirited code for the past two weeks seriously hobbling my ability to work between crashes, lockups and blue screens. I am very rough on hardware due to all the unreleased technology I install and uninstall or the crazy things I research and try as well as travel incidents like last year in remote Northern Turkana basin Kenya and having to place my laptop on blocks of ice due to the 115+ degree heat, and then AU 2011 where static electricity built up from all the walking and then I touched my laptop while it was running and the motherboard fried.
One of the biggest challenges when rebuilding your machine is knowing what your hardware is, what is installed, and what are you registration keys for the installed application. You can do it manually but that could seriously take forever and I found a free tool from a company that sells enterprise tools that give a tool for individuals to use to create a report of more details of your computer than you could ever do manually. From all your hardware details, OS and updates, driver versions, software and keys, to a list of the installed software you are not using frequently.I looked very closely into the tool to make sure it was not a scam tool or transmitted my data to their servers which it did not and was amazing to document my laptop hardware and software.
How do I know what is installed on my machine?
The Belarc Advisor http://belarc.com/free_download.html
One other thing I did when rebuilding my laptop is that I went with a Solid State Drive “SSD” instead of a standard drive. My bootup time of Windows from the power being off to logged in and ready to rock went from about 90 seconds to around 14 seconds with the same software installed. A SSD drive has no mechanical parts and is essentially flash memory like your cameras, iPads, and smartphones use. I am blown away at how fast a laptop can be running completely on a SSD drive.
Now I hopefully can get back to work with a healthy PC.
Cheers,
Shaan
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And I thought you read my blog…
http://rcd.typepad.com/rcd/2005/09/pc_app_map_with.html
Just kidding! Belarc is great, and I used the report to triage my existing pc when deciding what to reinstall/add to a new one.
Have yet to go SSD, looking at a Windows 8 UltraTabBook which will definitely have it but yet to find my perfect mix of features, build quality and size…
I definitely read your blog, but my memory cannot index or store all things I read.
You should check out a SSD drives as the prices are dropping and the performance is crazy fast. You can even just have one smaller SSD for the OS and applications and then a second mechanical drive for the data files and other stuff that you might feel are lower priority.
I agree re the memory thing. One reason I started blogging was to share/store tips etc.
Find it somewhat embarrassing, if useful, to do a web search to solve a problem and then find the answer on my own blog!
How funny! I have also Googled a problem and found the answer was on my blog before. I now use the search on my blog like a supplementary memory for myself. Someday I may just forget most everything and just Google it all, unless I forget how to Google…
I am looking at early plans for my next sabbatical and might just spend part of it in NZ. I will definitely plan on meeting up with my kiwi friends on both islands.
Cheers
Shaan
Hi Shaan,
If you end up coming to NZ, please do come and visit us at CADPRO in the South Island.
Cheers,
Gavin