Mitch vs the Computer
Right in the middle of finals week, I was preparing a final paper for Learning Theory in Music. I was hard at work, really in the zone, and my computer made a really disturbing noise and flashed an error message. It read something to the effect of, "Your hard drive has malfunctioned. Back up all your data immediately. The next time you see this message, you may lose all your data." Well, crap! So, I backed up my data and continued working. I had no time to go computer shopping before everything was due, so I had to hold out hope that my computer would make it till after finals were over. I did see that error message a few more times, but I was able to keep working through it and didn't lose anything.
Once finals were over, I had a decision to make: I could replace my whole computer or I could replace the hard drive. Not wanting to be wasteful and throw out a whole computer because of one malfunctioning part, I elected to buy a new hard drive. How hard could it be to install a new drive in the computer? (Very hard, it turns out. But we will get there soon enough). I did some shopping around and decided to go with an upgrade to a solid state drive instead of a replacement hard disk drive. I figured it I was going to spend money, I should buy something that would increase my computer's performance. I went with the Crucial MX200 drive.
It has the same amount of space as my old drive and it comes with software to clone the old disk onto the new disk. You see, you can't just plug a new disk into your laptop. If you take the old disk out, your operating system goes with it and the computer wont run, even with the new disk in it. So, you have to copy an exact image of your old drive onto the new drive before you can plug it into your system. Luckily, the software that comes with this drive makes it an easy process... as long as your old drive is working properly... which mine wasn't.
So, I tried to clone the old disk and got an error message. There was a bad sector on the old disk, which prevented it from cloning. Well, crap! So, now I was faced with the task of doing a fresh install of the operating system on the new disk: something I had no idea how to do. So, it turns out, I had to create boot media on a USB flash drive, set the computer to boot from the USB instead of from the hard drive, and boot up the computer with both the new drive and the USB drive plugged in. Microsoft provides the utility to make the USB boot device, so that was fine. All I needed was the product key for my copy of Windows 10. But, Microsoft does not provide product keys anymore. They are embedded in the computer's firmware, something that is super hard to access if you don't know how. (I didn't know how). So, I called Microsoft to get help. Well, it turns out that the license Microsoft sells for Windows 10 does not license the operating system to your computer, it licenses it to your hardware configuration. So, by installing a new hard drive, and thusly altering the hardware configuration, I forfeited the license for Windows 10 and had to buy a new copy. Well, crap!
Windows 8, however, is not licensed that way. Window 8 is licensed to the computer. And my computer was originally sold as a Windows 8 machine. So to install a new copy of Windows 8 on my new drive, all I had to do was revert my operating system to the original factory settings... which is really easy to do... as long as you have a healthy hard drive... which I didn't. I started the utility that resets the computer to its original settings and after hours of watching a black screen with a little swirling status circle display slowly increasing progress percentages, the computer flashes an error message: Windows installation has failed, reverting to your previously installed Windows version. So, that took me back to Windows 10, which was no help. I tried again, and again, and on the third install attempt, Windows 8 took root and the computer booted up in Windows 8. Progress!
Microsoft, though, does not offer the utility to make a USB boot device for Windows 8, but it does for Windows 8.1. But, that is a simple (and free) upgrade which is easy to do... if you have a healthy hard drive... which I didn't. When I first tried to upgrade to Windows 8.1, my computer told me that I needed to install a number of Windows updates before it could install Windows 8.1. Well, I had the same trouble doing that as installing Windows 8. I had to try multiple times before the updates would successfully install. And then, I had the same trouble with Windows 8.1. I tried to do the upgrade and the computer kept reaching an error message: Windows installation has failed, reverting to your previously installed Windows version. Well, that took me back to Windows 8, which I could not install on my new hard drive. Finally, Windows 8.1 took hold and I was able to boot up my computer using Windows 8.1.
The USB startup media utility from Microsoft was easy enough to run. Armed with my USB boot device, I was ready to install Windows on my new drive. All I had to do was enter the BIOS settings and put USB at the top of the boot order. Problem: USB was not listed as an option in the boot order! It took a bunch of research, but I finally figured out that I had to plug the USB into the computer for it to show up in the BIOS settings. With that knowledge in hand, I installed the new drive into the computer, plugged the USB into the jack, started up the computer, and Windows 8.1 installed seamlessly...
... though, once the computer booted up under the new operating system, it just shut right off. No error message, no warning, no crash report. It just shut off. So, I restarted and I had a successful boot. And then it just shut off again. No error message, no warning, no crash report. This happened a few times. Until I finally managed to get in a clean restart after boot up and it has been running well ever since. The new drive has improved performance immensely! I like how the computer is running now.
After a really long battle, Mitch for the win!
Installment 2 to come...
