>I’ve been needing to revamp the whole computer situation, and I think I’ve finally got it all in hand for the main PC: WinXP, WinXP64 on my SATA 3G RAID Striping HDs, and VISTA64 on my single SATA 3G. I’ve got to rebuild the VISTA boot menu to include the older choices, but that’s just a matter of indicating which partition they’re on.

The motherboard itself is acting wanky in the main machine. I bought an ASUS Crosshair so I could do dual 16x SLI and it appears to be having some sort of short related to the Clear BIOS switch. The LED and the included MB light (a light that illuminates the motherboard in case you’re doing upgrades in the dark – which I often do) appear to be acting wanky after I cleared the CMOS (again). Hitting DEL to change the BIOS settings results in the computer turning off.

I dispise power issues, shorts, insufficient power… all bains to the otherwise straightforward process of assembling a computer.

So now the configuration is this:
TV PC running XP (since it’s the only OS that will recognize my TV card) in the bedroom with the monitor. Main PC in the office running VISTA64 (with the others for backup should I need them) and this occured to me today – 160 Gig ATA133 with all my old TV shows and movies can go in the iMac which can be put in the living room and hooked to the TV. Since it’s not HD there’s no reason to go putting a big ol computer there. I’ll also have the happy little iMac in the living room, it’s silent and more of a living space sort of computer. I can record shows on the TV computer, edit and share them for the rest of the house on the network, so I can either watch them in bed or in the living room.

It’s a much different arrangement then I was thinking before, but I think it works, especially given the ability to have the monitor upstairs with no fuss.

Here’s some neat freeware I found:
Restoration – undelete even after emptying
Double Killer – find those duplicate files