My day job is in an IT support company, so when my computer at home breaks, I know how bad the issue is and usually I know what to do about it. Well, the issue on this desktop is severe IRQ interrupts, an issue I had with it on its original Vista install about three years ago. That was actually the major reason I downgraded it back to XP and only re-upgraded it back when Windows 7 beta and RC came out.
So there's a few things I'll be doing to it, but if they don't fix it, the only solution is a whole system rebuild. And at that point, I might as well just buy a new DIY kit and start from scratch. Reinstalling Windows is always the last resort, but for XP systems the best practice was to do a clean rebuild every six months, and for Vista it was once a year. It's been about a year and a half for the Windows 7 install on my desktop. Perhaps that'll be the benchmark for 7 installs.
DIY kits are the cheapest option for getting a brand new system, but they are not for the faint of heart. Even I've only applied thermal paste to a processor heat sink a few times in my life. On the other hand, it will be excellent practice - I've been putting off the A+ exam for a while now because I've been scared of the practical. The practical entails being handed a table of parts and being asked to build a computer. Well, if I can do it at home with a DIY kit, surely I can handle for a test. Right?
DIY kits also don't come with an OS. My copy of Windows 7 was purchased independent of the hardware, and my licensed copy of XP is sitting there collecting dust, so I can drop 7 on this theoretical new system and plop XP onto the old dying system and use it as a media center computer.
What does this have to do with writing? Not much, except that computers are a writer's primary tools these days. When they start messing up, I start counting myself lucky that everything is safely stored in Dropbox.
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