The Matrix and Brit’s Computer

First off, we saw the Matrix this afternoon. Not bad, not fantastic either. Believe it or not, I think playing the video game is helping to fill in some of the “what the fuck?” kinds of questions. There were a few bothersome things in this flick which I will address tomorrow in a full on review. For the moment let’s just say that since I stuck around to see the Matrix:Revolution trailer at the end of the credits, I’m more excited about that movie then the movie I just saw. More later.

Anyway, after the movie we came home and I started putting Brittney’s computer together… again. If you’ll remember, a while ago I was putting it together for her but we ran into some extreme difficulty with the motherboard. Can I just say that I’m now completely impressed with Abit. Asus can kiss my ass, my next board will be an Abit. After our failed attempt with the A7N8X-Deluxe, we decided to give the Abit NF7-S a shot. Not only did it boot on the first try, but it was the easiest motherboard I’ve ever worked with. Everything was labeled on the board, I didn’t even have to look at the manual, but if I had needed to it was well over 100 pages. It documented everything. Every single jumper had a complete diagram and full page explanation of what it did or would/wouldn’t do if set in any combination of ways. It even has wonderful little features that don’t become apparent until you really take a look. For example, everyone has those little “eject clips” on their RAM slots, but how about one for your AGP slot? Cool hun. It also doubles as an anti-movement card saver in case you’re moving your rig all over the place (*cough* lan parties *cough*). The BIOS was also the most friendly, non-pain-in-my-ass system I’ve ever seen. It’s an over-clockers dream as well. Complete explanations for every setting and a “smart” CPU menu that helps out and recommends FSB and multiplier settings based on what your changing.

So, now that I’ve sung the praises of that motherboard, back to the install. At the moment, everything is back in and assembled. At this point, it boots to the XP loading screen, blue-screens and give an 0x07b STOP error. When you look it up in the MS knowledge base, this is what you get:

“SYMPTOMS:
After you move the system (boot) disk to a backup computer, you may receive the following Stop error when you try to start the Windows-based backup computer:

STOP: 0x0000007B (0xF741B84C,0xC0000034,0x00000000,0x00000000)
INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE”

Yup, that’s what I got…

“CAUSE
This error can occur if the registry entries and drivers for the mass storage controller hardware in the backup computer are not installed in Windows.

The PnP-ID information of mass storage controllers for the backup computer must be in the registry before startup so that Windows can initialize the correct drivers”

Ok, that’s what I figured the problem was… so now what genius, how do I fix it?

“RESOLUTION
To resolve this error, follow these steps for system recovery:

-If the system disk is an IDE disk, use the same kind of motherboard in the new computer, a motherboard that has the same kind of IDE chip set and the same PnP-ID as the motherboard in the computer that you are backing up.”

Ummm… what kind of advice is that? Sure, I just happen to have a spare computer with the exact same parts in it sitting right over here. If it’s IDE, use the same motherboard? What if I’m upgrading you numb-nuts? I didn’t figure that this advice was really intended for an upgrader. More likely it’s for someone trying to recover after a meltdown. At least it’s pointing me in a good direction. I figure I good solid reformat should do the trick. That’ll be on tomorrow’s agenda. After I find a boot-floppy that is. Oh well. At least it’s booting, which is more that it was doing last time.

And with that, I retire for the evening.