Post by AndyRob on Nov 13, 2015 18:22:14 GMT
I forget whether it was a year or even more since I upgraded two of my three Xl201s but I occasionally look back here to see what's been happening.
From the time I bought these machines for the kitchen, sitting room and bedroom, I was frustrated first by the Vista upgrade ("there's no such thing as a free lunch"), then the lack of compatibility with the Sony TVs bought to go with them, and then issues with WMC, graphics cards, HDMI, etc.
But the efforts of the Mr Big project, and Oliver, made possible the new lease of life given to these potentially good but previously little used machines. Today, even with W10 released (but with no WMC unfortunately), I'm still grateful for the new lease of life they've been given with the new BIOS and W7. I recently upgraded my third machine - the last one to remain working in its original XP state until problems with WMC meant I had to update it to W7 as well.
I can't remember if it was made clear in the instructions but my own notes from last year, when I did the other two, made no mention of exactly when I should have applied the quick and easy Firewire driver update which prevents the boot-up process freeze on start up - at the colourful Mr Big/Vaio splash screen (details of which are elsewhere on this site).
Anyway, by NOT dealing with the Firewire issue first, I had a few issues with this recent W7 (new) install process. W7 needs a few restarts to install and, by not having dealt with Firewire first, I had a few freezes which corrupted the installation. I got it all going in the end, after a few aborted boot-ups, with the built-in W7 "repair" (which itself wasn't easy to get into) and applying the new driver update after W7 got itself sorted, but I think that installing the driver before W7 (or, better, disabling the Firewire) would have avoided those problems.
Anyway, if you're reading this and wondering whether to upgrade your own machine, then do it. You wouldn't believe how much better it will perform with W7 , the Mr Big BIOS, more memory, a bigger hard disc (or three) and an older HDMI card - all which you can get really cheaply nowadays compared with just a few years ago.
PS, meant to say that this 3rd machine, the one with an additional 1Tb RAID array used just for TV recordings, was converted back to three simple 500gb SATA drives. I found the striped RAID configuration reliable and quick but no better in use than the standard config to which I've reverted for simplicity.
From the time I bought these machines for the kitchen, sitting room and bedroom, I was frustrated first by the Vista upgrade ("there's no such thing as a free lunch"), then the lack of compatibility with the Sony TVs bought to go with them, and then issues with WMC, graphics cards, HDMI, etc.
But the efforts of the Mr Big project, and Oliver, made possible the new lease of life given to these potentially good but previously little used machines. Today, even with W10 released (but with no WMC unfortunately), I'm still grateful for the new lease of life they've been given with the new BIOS and W7. I recently upgraded my third machine - the last one to remain working in its original XP state until problems with WMC meant I had to update it to W7 as well.
I can't remember if it was made clear in the instructions but my own notes from last year, when I did the other two, made no mention of exactly when I should have applied the quick and easy Firewire driver update which prevents the boot-up process freeze on start up - at the colourful Mr Big/Vaio splash screen (details of which are elsewhere on this site).
Anyway, by NOT dealing with the Firewire issue first, I had a few issues with this recent W7 (new) install process. W7 needs a few restarts to install and, by not having dealt with Firewire first, I had a few freezes which corrupted the installation. I got it all going in the end, after a few aborted boot-ups, with the built-in W7 "repair" (which itself wasn't easy to get into) and applying the new driver update after W7 got itself sorted, but I think that installing the driver before W7 (or, better, disabling the Firewire) would have avoided those problems.
Anyway, if you're reading this and wondering whether to upgrade your own machine, then do it. You wouldn't believe how much better it will perform with W7 , the Mr Big BIOS, more memory, a bigger hard disc (or three) and an older HDMI card - all which you can get really cheaply nowadays compared with just a few years ago.
PS, meant to say that this 3rd machine, the one with an additional 1Tb RAID array used just for TV recordings, was converted back to three simple 500gb SATA drives. I found the striped RAID configuration reliable and quick but no better in use than the standard config to which I've reverted for simplicity.
