Commentary--I'm here today to make a startling revelation. My current PC scares me.In the art world, there's a trend to refer to large scale works as 'installations', although I'll freely admit that I have no idea why this is so. I've also got very little idea as to when, how, why or in what context I'm meant to appreciate certain works of 'art', although in the case of some works that sense of bafflement is probably the exact intent.
Say 'installation' to a tech person, though, and thoughts will inevitably shift to finding CDs that have managed to tuck themselves just behind the monitor -- or the last suitable place you'll look -- along with a myriad of registration codes, network settings and other assorted ephemera that comes with it. However, a recent installation (in the IT sense) that I undertook left me in as much of a state of bewilderment as any art installation possibly could.
The date was last Friday, and I'd come to a momentous decision. It was time to reinstall Windows on my main work PC. Actually, to be honest, it was probably time to reinstall Windows about six months ago, but last Friday was about the first day where I could dial back my other work requirements to make it a practical task. The installation of Windows 2000 on my work machine had been in place for at least two years, and probably more, and it was growing stranger by the day. Last Thursday, however, when it decided that I didn't in fact have any programs installed, was the last straw, especially when the fixes suggested by Microsoft's own knowledge base only ate up time with no result. So Friday it was, and just to add to the challenge, I decided it was time to ramp up to Windows XP -- our test systems use it, but to be honest, for basic writing work one could use anything that produces basic text -- so even the Amiga 500 that's gathering dust in my cupboard at home would suffice.
After backing up the entire drive to another system (Alex's friendly tech reminder: When did you last back up your vital documents? Have you ever backed up your vital documents?). I formatted the drive and booted from the install CD. I had all the relevant installation CDs and downloadable executables for the various packages I use ready to go once that had finished, and some other work to be going on with while Windows amused itself with pointless animated icons that are meant to show file activity but tend to just flicker back and forth to show that they can, in fact, still flicker back and forth. If they ever stop, you know you're in trouble.
The really bizarre thing -- more bizarre, say, than an art installation of decapitated moose heads hanging above a collection of Batman comics called "010101010FredWilmaEffluent", for example -- is that the entire installation, including using Windows Update to pick up the 20 or so patches and updates, went extremely smoothly. I won't pretend it was as fast as, say, dropping a Knoppix CD into a machine and rebooting, but I encountered no problems whatsoever. This is deeply creepy, twilight-zone stuff here, people. I've never had an OS installation go smoothly, including Windows XP ones. Indeed, the last time I did an XP installation, it took Windows Update three whole days to get a service pack, and then the graphics drivers killed themselves, forcing another reinstallation on top.
I've had installations go smoothly, except for the fact that vital system files weren't made part of the install -- and for some reason, Microsoft's had a knowledge base article about that problem too. I've had installs get to the 90 percent complete phase, only to hang completely. I've had installations that were meant to be multi-boot suddenly decide to take over as the primary OS only. I've had stacks of CDs sitting ready to install, only to have the accompanying registration information flee into some dark corner, rendering their optical installation media useless. But I've never, up until this point, had an installation go smoothly. It's at the stage now where my machine is running so smoothly that I'm almost scared of what will go wrong; if you hear an explosion as you read this, it's probably my machine going up.
It's a bit of a sad indictment on the IT industry, of course, that I should be creeped out by something actually working. Or perhaps I'm just thinking about it too much -- perhaps I should just thank my lucky stars and get on with using IT for something useful. What a wacky concept.
What do you think? Ever had a smooth install, or for that matter, a horrific one? In what way will Alex's machine betray him, or is he indeed thinking too much about it all? Send us your thoughts to edit@zdnet.com.au.
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