News update...
I went to the place, it's called Insertech, and was agreeably surprised.
I was thinking that their monitor inventory would be mostly made of old CRT but it was, in fact, only flat screens. They don't even bother refurbishing them; no market. My choice was a 20" Samsung SyncMaster 2053BW LCD screen. Sold new at around 250$, I got mine for 69$ (taxes included).
This screen will eventually be hooked to my new/old rig; a Dell Dimension 5150 upgraded to Win 7 Family Edition - 149$. I say "eventually" because, first thing first, I was pressed by time to get the XP in order before the M$ end of services deadline. More on that later.
They were able to "enslave" my W98 HD (60GB) and, apparently, I will be able to recuperate most of my stuff. The second HD, which was the original W98SE HD (15GB), could replace it if I need be. The main HD is 320GB, 4.27 time what I had with the two-HD W98SE. And all that is mine, MINE, MINE! Hooooaaaaa!
They also installed a dial-up modem, to the amusement of the desk clerk who thought it could not be done. They call them "fax-modem" nowadays.
A keyboard and a laser mouse later, I was 273$ lighter in my wallet, but I don't complain.
Then came smilo's head's up; tick, tick, tick... XP is running out of time. From his post, I got the impression that the deadline was April's fool day, so I crawled under the pile of furniture and retrieve that "near the curb" XP machine and plugged it.
I already had plugged that machine before, just out of curiosity. The mention of XP was encouraging, but I did not look much further at the time. This time, my first impression has been... shall we say... tamed.
It is a Compaq Presario 5220 upgraded from W98 to XP. Compared to my dear departed W98SE, it does not shine, to say the least. The CPU is clocking at 379MHz (opposed to 667Mhz for my W98SE), and the RAM memory was standing at 192MB, which I increased to 256MB by adding a 64MB stick out of the 320MB of my old faithful. It can only accept 64 or 128MB sticks, which is a pity since I had a 133 PC stick of 256MB. Installing that stick in the beast was a contortion act worthy of a Cirque du Soleil performance.
That machine had never received any service pack, so getting SP3 was priority one. One problem; this is a hefty 309MB download for a dial-up, compounded by a relic IE6 browser. My first attempt died at 186MB, second attempt was a tad better; 225MB. So I borrowed my wife Vista laptop for a third attempt and got a disappointing 222MB. The false "completed" message letting her to believe that I should try installing it anyway. I knew better...
Last resort; the nearby city park. Our actual district mayor had free wi-fi installed last summer. So, with my wife blessings, I took her Vista to the park. First attempt was a dismal failure; I couldn't see a thing on the screen! So I went back home, thinking something was wrong with the machine. My wife was a bit panicked when she re-opened it at home, but she finally had it up and running. So back to the park, and again nothing!
But while wondering what was going wrong, I suddenly noticed a faint bar where the password should be typed. The thing was open all along, but the glare of the sun on the snow simply obliterated everything! If I had heard something, I would have known, but my wife always mute the sound on her machine.
Last last resort; the men's room at the park's chalet. I went to the farthest stall from the entrance and, after sitting the Vista on the throne, I opened it (Eureka; I see!) and typed-in the password, located the wi-fi connection, and tried connecting to it; signal too weak!
Last last last resort; the sink counter on the closest wall to the wi-fi emitters, a hundred yards outside. And this time, it worked. Fifteen minutes later, I had my SP3.
It was the 28 of March and I was exhausted, you may understand why. The installation of the program was, for once, uneventful. As soon as it was done, the XP machine became more cooperative. I was able to install IE8 (what an ugly browser!) and Firefox 28, much more to my liking. I had Firefox on my W98SE and almost exclusively used that one. I may install Google Chrome on the Win7 machine, but it will be as a backup. IE8 is a goner.
Now, chasing for a good (and free) AV. I tried in succession AntiVir, Avira and Avast, all too bulky for this machine or simply incapable to load or install, so I resorted to my last AV on my W98 machine; ClamWin (
HERE). The scanning takes forever, but it works! With the addon Clam Sentinel (
HERE) to cover the "on the fly" detection, I had a no bells/no frills AV, which is fine with me.
It took me four days to scan the whole HD, but it was worth it; 100 infected files were found, quarantined and, ultimately, removed. Fortunately, most infected files were on the D drive redundant and useless personal settings of the previous owners. Mom and dad were clean as a whistle, but their teenage boy was a pig! I wonder if he knew what anti-virus are there for and how they works. Remember Kazaa? I do...
During most of that time, I would leave the machine on internet so that M$ automated updater could do the job. The little yellow shield was almost always present. You know that I don't minced my words when M$ goes wrong IMO. Well, this time I will praised them for their updating app; unobtrusive, quiet and flexible program that doesn't eat-up the memory or the bandwidth. In the little time it had, it downloaded more than 120 "critical updates" and the sort, despite all the front door activities. A tip of my hat is in order.
I did had a little mishap when I deleted some registry keys during a buggy update but, with the help of smilo, I was able to patch things up.
So, this puny little W98-wanabee-XP machine is updated and, as far as I can tell, virus free. I have already installed FS95 and FS98 on it, and CFS1 will soon get there too.
Now, it's Win 7 time... to be continued...
...for the moment.
...
!
... more on that later.