It's alive!!!!

Althought I try to keep my PC in tip-top shape as much as possible, there comes a time where it inevitably needs a fresh start, which calls for a reformat and reinstallation of Windows. Now this is the first PC that I've built that has Serial ATA (SATA) built into it, which is the connector used to link up the hard drive to the motherboard. Although SATA is much neater inside the PC case and provides faster hard drive speed throughput theoretically, it is a pain in a butt to install with, as you need to do the F8 salute during the Windows XP installation to install some drivers for the SATA chip, and to do that requires a floppy drive. Forunately for me when I was building this PC back at home, I took out the floppy in my parent's computer and installed the drivers accordingly. Now, back at my dorm, I don't have a working floppy drive lying around, so an online trip to Newegg was in store. After a quick search, I settled on this Samsung floppy drive which seemed to have pretty good reviewer feedback. The drive came in today, so right after I got back from the office, I got started with reformatting and reinstalling.



Now, Microsoft had been working on Service Pack 2 for XP for quite a while to fix the annoying security problems that have crept into XP. Now, I'm all for keeping your own PC secure, but XP seems to go way overboard in terms of checking to make sure you don't download malicious files and such. Every download so far that I've done popped a window saying that file attempting to be downloaded was "not verified". I guess for the average user who doesn't know the difference between a Firewall and Firewire, this might be a good thing, but for those who are power users and very maticulous and careful about taking care of their PC, it's a major annoyance.



One more rant: ATI really needs to do something about their drivers. Every time so far when I have reinstalled their graphics drivers, I always run into the annoying problem of the drivers setting the monitor refresh rate at 56 Hz after installing the drivers and rebooting. Since my LCD doesn't support that rate, I'm greeted with a blank screen as Windows boots onto the desktop. The "easy" way to fix this is to scour into the Registry and modify the registry entry that controls the refresh rate from 56 to 60, but it still makes me mad to do this every single time when ATI has a new driver release.



On a semi-good note, the yearly Yahoo fantasy football draft is tomorrow, and I always get pumped up for it since my Cornell friends and I are very competitive in our own league. Last year I was fortunately to have a good running game consisted of Priest Holmes (aka Fantasy Football RB God :P), Jamal Lewis, and Stephan Davis. My qbs were kind of weak, but Jon Kitna had a breakout year last year; unforunately, he has been displaced this year by Carson Palmer, the Bengel's first round pick in last year's NFL draft. I really haven't decided yet who I'm gonna pick, but I'll see where my draft spot is and strategize from there.