This could be a particularly long rant because it was a particularly long weekend spent dealing once again with a company that has caused me more lost hours in my life than any other.

The story began a month or so ago when a power outage fried some memory on my main computer at home and caused bad reboots to corrupt Windows.

Now I've built all my home computers by watching for bargains on components at my local Frys Electronics and piecing them together. As most of you know as well, I have a wife and two teenage boys. Until I created my flight simulation scenery company we always just had one home computer that we'd all share but, with the huge amount of work I needed to do on the software, it was obvious that it was time for more workstations.

As the money started rolling in from the company, much of it went into getting computers for each of the inhabitants of the house. Mine, because of the graphics requirements of the simulations software, needed to be a powerhouse so as I built other computers, I would simply buy the best motherboard I could find, put it into mine and trickle down the components I was replacing into the new units. Each time I'd build a new computer, I'd purchase an OEM copy of Windows XP which would be discounted from the full price because it was packaged with the motherboard. Now these are full home version licenses on standard install disks and cost around $100 each. Not exactly chump change. This fact will be important as the story progresses.

As I built the computers, I stayed aware of linking the proper license of XP with the motherboard it was purchased with which is somewhat of a pain but for once in my life I really wanted to stay on the up and up with the full legal requirements.

As many of you probably know, XP is the first MS OS that really peeks into your environment and tries to prevent piracy of the software. You must validate each install by connecting to MS through the internet or phoning in and going through an automated phone process where you send and receive sets of numbers back and forth. Everything is tied to the license key. Generally, if you only install or reinstall a few times and there's no hardware changes, the process is fast and accurate. However, make a significant change to your system and trouble begins. Microsoft deduces that if your hardware changes too much from when you first validate, that there's a distinct possibility you're moving your license to a new machine and you must validate again to ensure you don't have the same license in multiple places.

So back to where the problems started. Windows XP is a fragile beast that insists upon being shut down properly or its brain gets addled often to the point of an impossible recovery without employing the install disk. When my memory fried, the computer boot sequence became intermittent, sometimes going all the way and other times failing part way into the boot and restarting. With Windows that's the worst possible scenario. It almost certainly requires a rebuild. Once I determined that rebuilding from the install disk was my only option I began that process (luckily I have my data and program files on separate drives and partitions from the OS). Now each time you rebuild, it goes through the entire install process which takes about 40 minutes. Now my workstation was built originally back before XP SP2 came out so my OEM install disk is for SP1. I also have a CD with SP2 on it for that license. Well the rebuild went fine for about 35 minutes and then error boxes started coming up that indicated files couldn't be read or written. Sometimes retries would get past the files but eventually it became clear that the install disk was corrupt. I tried everything I could think of to get this to work knowing that this license had to be linked to this computer.

When I exhausted all options I took one of the other install disks for one of my son's computer and finished the fix. It would actually turn out that I had to completely reinstall the OS in the next day because of the damage done. Now I have two computers in the house with the same license and key on them. Somehow the validation went through though. I intended when I had time, to call MS and get a replacement for my original corrupted disk and get the licenses back in order. A week or so later I called MS and they told me they wouldn't replace that disk since it was an OEM copy, that I'd need to negotiate with where I'd purchased it. Frys just laughed at me and told me I was probably stuck buying a new copy. I didn't blame them. It had probably been 2 years since I'd bought that from them. Since my install had worked and validated with the other license though I was only a bit irritated but had this feeling this might nail me later.

Well this last weekend Frys had a great deal on a screamer motherboard/CPU combo and I decided to upgrade my computer again, knowing the trickle down to the other computers in the house would also happen. (Part of the motivation for this is my son Keith who's studying film making and requires some real processing power for his high-def videos). He would get my current motherboard and the PCI-E video card I'd recently upgraded.

So, I meticulously removed my old motherboard and replaced it with the new screamer, triple-checked to ensure my wiring was intact and plugged it in. Lights glowed on the motherboard indicating it had power. After a few seconds I could smell a burning and I quickly unplugged the machine. I removed the board and could find no indication of damage and could not pinpoint the source of the smell. Further sniffing led me to my power supply and it became obvious it had fried. Opening it up confirmed that. I took the board to Frys and they bench tested it to ensure it was not the source of the PS problems and it booted perfectly. Frys had a 500W unit for sale for $29.95 so I was back in business.

Now my couple hour task had now ballooned into almost all day Saturday with the long trips to Frys but I was buoyed when I got back, put in the new unit and it all fired up. In no time I was into XP and got the anticipated message telling me my hardware had significantly changed and I'd have to revalidate Windows. Of course the new hardware made my wireless network adapter require a reinstall so the validation over the internet would not work. That led me to have to make the phone call to the validation center. This consists of reading in a series of numbers into an automatic voice system and typing in numbers it reads back to you. At the end of that you have a number of questions about the reasons for the validation. One of them was if it was for a motherboard replacement which I answered truthfully and then the next was if the previous board was broken. I also answered that question truthfully and said no. I think that was my mistake because the computer generated voice came back and told me they could not validate my copy and to stay on the line if I wanted to talk to an actual human.

Well the human that came on was obviously foreign, probably in India. He proceeded to ask me all the same questions the auto system had asked and I stopped him and said "Before we go on, let me explain to you the day I've had and the how I got to this point. You need to know this to understand my state of mind in case you turn down my validation." I explained how MS had refused to replace my original disk and how I was forced to use another license to get my machine running and that I had paid a large sum of money over the years to stay legal in my licensing. I then said that I was terribly irritated that I was being forced to go through such a process when I'd tried so hard to stay within the requirements and that I could now understand the hacker mentality of software pirates against his company. I made it clear that there would be no solution other than immediate validation so that I could get on with my work. I may have used a few choice words in this discourse.

He was obviously flustered and knew he had a live one on the line and said he had to check on something and to hold. A few seconds later my connection ended. As you can imagine I did a bit of screaming at that point.

Miraculously though, I was somehow magically able to validate all copies of Windows from that point on. My guess is the hang up was accidental and this guy knew that if I got back on the line with him, his life would be unpleasant and just hit the "magic button".

I wish that had been my only concern over the rest of the weekend. Keith's computer install went alright but took many hours to configure it all. My youngest son's upgrade turned to Hell. His computer booted right up into Windows after then new motherboard was put in just to give me false confidence. Naturally, there were software updates to make for the new computer hardware and when they completed they required a reboot. It failed. Once it tried to go into Windows again, it went into a rebooting cycle where it would only get so far and then restart again. My only recourse was to do a repair from his install disk - the good old 40 minute cycle. Just to hurry along this story, I ended up doing that repair process at least 3 times until I gave up and decided a full install was in order. Of course I had to back up his huge array of music and video files to some external drive before I could begin and that took even more hours. I wiped his drive, partitioned it for a small system volume and reinstalled XP. It finally worked just in time for me to have to get ready for bed on Sunday evening to look forward to work first thing the next morning. I HADN'T EVEN HAD A CHANCE TO USE MY NEW UPGRADED COMPUTER YET.

Microsoft owes me a full weekend for their crappy software and lousy customer service that caused a 6 hour job to balloon into 2 1/2 days of Hell. I wonder how I should make out the bill. And they want us all to move into Vista.

Sorry for the rant but I needed it.

Art