Planned and Unplanned Storage Upgrades and Replacements for 2013

We purchased a Compaq Presario B1200 series notebook (specific model was B1293TU) for my wife in the middle of 2008. We finally bought a replacement laptop in December of 2011 and gave this old one to our daughter. On New Year's Eve of 2012, after more than 4 years of heavy use, its hard drive finally failed.

We have a PC we use to store almost all our family's files, our main desktop PC which I simply named Storage. The last time this was in use was April 10, 2012. That was the day I came to the conclusion that the hard disk of our Storage PC was failing.

Dimensione All-in-One Portable iPod Shuffle and PC Speakers and AM/FM Radio

I was looking for USB powered PC speakers for quite a while since I didn't have any good speakers for my desktop PC.  We were just using earphones or headphones instead.  For some time, I was eyeing these $4 speakers at CDR-King, but I put off buying them until I was absolutely certain that I really needed them. 

With our tough cash flow situation, it wasn't easy to justify spending for USB powered speakers over more urgent expenses, so I decided it could wait until we had enough savings or when I could no longer tolerate using earphones or headphones or going without hearing any sound.

Aside from PC speakers, I was also looking at speakers that my pair of iPod Shuffles could dock with.  There are only a few to choose from and they're either small and underpowered (for portability) with low quality sound, or non-portable, or just plain expensive, so I felt that these iPod Shuffle speakers weren't worth my time and money and I could totally live without them. 

Imagine my surprise when I found speakers that an iPod Shuffle could dock with.  They were the right size while still maintaining portability, could run on batteries, and had good solid quality sound.   Plus, it had AM/FM radio, could be used as PC speakers, and was inexpensive.  To top it all off, I found out later on that the speakers could be powered via USB.

Looking again at TipidPC.com in 2011

I recently made another purchase at TipidPC.com (TPC) and this made me take a look back at my past transaction history.  It seems that I haven't been making many deals over the past 6 years.  In my first two years of buying and selling through TPC, I received feedback ratings for 44 transactions.  On the other hand, for the past 6 years, I've only had 9 deals that were represented by feedbacks.  I had no transactions in 2008 but I had 3 deals in 2009.

Transferring Windows XP to a New or Different Hardware Configuration

Moving Windows XP to a virtual machine or a physical machine (a PC or laptop) with a different hardware configuration can cause XP to experience a blue screen upon startup.  A BSOD with a Stop 0x0000007E error code means an incompatible CPU while an incompatible hard disk controller will result in BSOD with a Stop 0x0000007B error code .

Before moving Windows XP to a new or different hardware setup, rename amdppm.sys or intelppm.sys to a different filename so that the driver won't load and cause a BSOD.  Make sure to set the SATA type in the BIOS to Native IDE or Legacy IDE since XP doesn't have built-in drivers for SATA hard drive controllers.  Watch XP boot into the desktop on your different hardware setup.

Once in XP, go to HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\intelppm (or amdppm) and change the Start value to 4. Install the correct CPU or chipset drivers and then rename amdppm.sys or intelppm.sys back to their correct filenames.