kjpepper | The Goddess of Hardware laughs . . . (Reply)

There has got to be some capricious Goddess that watched my hour-long struggle with the new video card and howled with laughter as I struggled with it. As added bonus, and giving the entire process a Marx Brothers or Three Stooges like appeal, I was restricted from either swearing, banging my head against the monitor, or taking a sledgehammer to anything due to the two individuals in slumbery repose just a somewhat thin wall away from the area of the computer, so all acting out of the below frustrations had to be in pantomime.

First I gleefully pull out all thingummies from back of computer. Lift it onto a chair out of the way, exposing a hideous tangle of wires and huge dust bunnies glutted on their exclusive diet of cat hair.
I unplug and pull out the double window fan that has been quite helpfully feeding additional air into the case these past two months.
armed with compressed air and tweezers, I carry the fan into the kitchen and, amid much sneezing, carefully denude the fan's case and innards of dust, cat hair, and people hair.
install marginally cleaner fan in our window.
carefully defoul, untangle, and lift out of the way each wire and cable that had been residing between the fan and the case
Sweep out the bunnies and the loose dust from under the computer table and in the area where the wires were.
Floor cleaned and again armed with air can, I pull down the computer from the chair, causing it to disgorge a 3.5 floppy and a zip. Both clatter to the floor with a noise that is abominably loud in the stillness.
pause, as I listen for any noise from the bedroom. None. I breathe, take up my can, blow off the clinging turds of maleficent dust bunnies from the back of the case, set the case lovingly on it's side, then holding down the little catch releases on both sides, yank upwards. The case unfolds, disturbing some itsy bitsy bunnies that had taken up residence inside. I gleefully chase them out with air can.
I destatic myself, then reach for new video card, waiting patiently in the box in which it was shipped, still wrapped in its mysterious cloak of anti-static. I unwrap the card and reach inside the bag, grasping the barest corner of the card between thumb and forefinger and pull. Nothing happens except for a hideously loud crackle from the bag. I try again. The card is not coming out.
At this time I notice two of the cats approaching and beginning to sniff curiously at the open case. I discover that a can of compressed air makes even more effective feline repellant than a spray bottle of water.
I continue my efforts with the recalcitrent card. It refuses to come out. Finally I risk waking everyone and tear the bag down one seam, revealing that the bag is stuck to the back of the card near the bottom. I roll my eyes, then carefully dislodge the card. It looks very similar to old card, except it is a different manufacturer so the chips are in a slightly different configuration. And presumably the fan works.
I swap out the cards. Piece of cake. Wrap up the old one in the now ruined antistatic bag, shut up the case, stand it back up properly, and begin the process of "hmm, now which cord goes where?" Finally get everything connected, sit down, and fire up the Beast.
It boots. So far so good, everything's showing up on screen like it's supposed to. After the Windows ME screen goes off, I get the little notice that new hardware's been detected. A Generic Video adapter. I think "'k," click next, it tells me to restart. I wait, it restarts, it tells me it's found a monitor. I think "Congratulations, whaddya want, a cookie?" Click next. Instead of the beautiful usual screen of Rurouni Kenshin walking away in a snowfall and the usual litter of icons, I get this screechingly hideous thing consisting of blobs of blocky color and grayed out, sickly looking icons. the screen also seems to have reverted from its usual tolerable (if a bit claustrophobic IMHO) 800x600 resolution to the absolutely unacceptable 640x480.
I panic. For a hot second.
Come to my senses long enough to look at the display properties. Am informed that we are not only indeed running in 640x480, but in 16 colors. Not 16 bit colors. 16. As in 16 is all I get. No other alternatives present themselves either by way of the menu or by way of the slider.
Restart. No change. Indulge myself in another silent panic fit.
Calm down, go to display properties, and banish the perverted background image, changing the desktop to what appears to be a flat gray. Still panicking a little, I also fire up Trillian (unrecognizably ugly) in the hopes of finding harinezumi online so I can panic at him instead of all by meself, but no dice - too early for him to be awake, I'd imagine. Finally realize that (duh) I didn't do the smart thing and download the correct drivers for this thing beforehand. Set off to a curiously ugly World Wide Web, specifically a pretty disgusting looking Google.com (and it's hard to make Google look ugly), and then, thinking better of it, going directly to the Creative.com web site. I find the driver with little trouble, although the color set does make the navigation challenging. It's kind of amusing to have broadband access with seriously shitty video.
I download the driver, uninstall the generic video adapter, install the correct piece of hardware, restart again. This time Windows finds first the same generic video driver (NO!!!), then the correct video driver (Phew!) It asks me to restart again. I click the button that at this point I think should say "Sure whatever" instead of "OK"
Computer restarts. It informs me it's found a monitor. I resist throttling the monitor base and click OK. Instead of a flat gray background with an absurdly large mouse pointer, the background is now a soft, welcoming blue, and the pointer is back to its normal size. The icons all show up then, resplendant in their mostly-usual-but-still-slightly-off colors. I go to display properties, am rewarded by the site of many choices for screen resolutions and many choices for color sets (except the hideous 16 color!) The clouds part above my head and choirs of angels sing "Hallelujah!" at me before I tell them to shut up, as people are still sleeping in here. They depart, waving their harps at me in a curiously disgruntled fashion.
notice that we are running in high color and not true color and in the new Kenshin background I have just selected for the Casita's computer usage pleasure, Ken-san's face is a bit pixellated. I move the color up to True Color. Have to restart again.
talk myself out of beating the Dell to death by pointing out to myself that a) this machine is used and enjoyed by all b) it was an expensive bit of Rhombus RAM penis c) there are people sleeping and forcibly destprying the thing would make too much noise and d) I really was almost done - I just had to wait as this thing restarted one last time.
Computer boots up. Kenshin appears, looking resplendantly angsty. I sigh with relief and pop open Semagic.

And now I am done writing up the hellacious experience. And now to rustle me up some breakfast, and then some idle surfing I think, followed by possibly attacking the PHP assignment I've set for myself.

Happy 4th, everyone.