Changing Computers (Part 5)
By: Mr JM
If your old computer died and you’ve bought (or begged borrowed or stolen) another to take its place, you may think you have to start all over. There is however, some good news. If your computer died, the chances are excellent the hard disk is still viable so you can get all your work transferred over to the new machine.
And if your hard disk died, the chances are pretty good your computer is OK and all you need is a new hard disk. If you are one of the six people in the country who have actually backed up their work, you’re smiling. If you aren’t one of them, there’s a possibility of getting your data back from the hard disk.
First you need to have the computer up and running – this probably means getting a new hard disk, a Windows disk, and rebuilding your Windows system. There are some earlier posts in this blog to deal with how to boot to your Windows CD and run setup.
For most desktops, the Windows build process will provide adequate access to all the hardware. The areas where it tends to miss are with Video cards, Network cards and Audio cards. Also, laptops tend to have radically tweaked drivers for the hardware inside – you WILL need to find your laptop drivers and have them ready to install once Windows is up and running.
If you don’t have a list of the hardware that is in your machine, you should make one now. For those with a dead doorstop in front of them, open the machine, touch something large and metal for grounding, then look inside the box to see what identification you can find.
If the PC will start but not boot into Windows, you can usually find the information about what hardware you have in CMOS – this is the hardware setup of your computer – usually pressing [Delete] or [Del]> as the computer starts will get you into it, but on some systems it can be [F2] or even [F1]
NOTE: Change nothing in CMOS!!! Doing so without knowing what you do can kill your machine dead! Knowing in this instance means actually KNOWING what that setting is and what changing it will mean for your chips and circuits.
Once you have your hardware information, go to a friend, to your work or to an Internet Café and find the manufacturer’s website, track down the model of hardware you have and download the drivers for it. If you don’t have one already, get a USB stick. (AKA USB memory, USB flash drive, USB key) You can buy a 2GB one for around $20.
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