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4,296 Posts
Ok.. I made a classic error the other day, a stupid noob error!
I removed the CPU from the motherboard and didn't immediately protect the socket. I was going to replace the cpu cooling fan and I wanted to clean the thermal grease off the chip before installing the new fan.
The old fan slipped and fell back in the case and landed an edge directly on the socket... scratch one motherboard.
The lesson learned from the above is obvious... practice what I preach!
But I learned a couple of other things.. changing the motherboard constitutes one of those changes that upsets the powers that be... beginning with Microsoft.
When I booted the PC back up, Vista handled the new motherboard quite well, it replaced 4 drivers on its own and requested one Intel driver that it didn't have. Asus had supplied the driver on a disc, so no problems there, but Vista also had become "unlicensed". Seems a motherboard is enough to trigger the license monitoring system. Microsoft thankfully provided an easy automated telephone system for dealing with the problem and only took about 6 minutes to re-establish the license.
The next problem is a big mess and was triggered by the same change. DRM alarm bells went off. My Zune software won't start at all, Windows Media Player is throwing network sharing errors all over the place and wont stay open, you can play a non drm song if you play the song from the file.
There are numerous suggestions for clearing this issue discussed on line and at Microsoft, but all the solutions are of the nature of "sometimes this works". I have already tried a number of the solutions and my problem is no better.
I will probably reinstall the OS and my software over the weekend to make sure all issues are gone relating to the change, a pain, but the only way to be 100% sure of everything.
It will mean another call to Microsoft. I'll probably have to explain to a human this time what a noob I am...
I removed the CPU from the motherboard and didn't immediately protect the socket. I was going to replace the cpu cooling fan and I wanted to clean the thermal grease off the chip before installing the new fan.
The old fan slipped and fell back in the case and landed an edge directly on the socket... scratch one motherboard.
The lesson learned from the above is obvious... practice what I preach!
But I learned a couple of other things.. changing the motherboard constitutes one of those changes that upsets the powers that be... beginning with Microsoft.
When I booted the PC back up, Vista handled the new motherboard quite well, it replaced 4 drivers on its own and requested one Intel driver that it didn't have. Asus had supplied the driver on a disc, so no problems there, but Vista also had become "unlicensed". Seems a motherboard is enough to trigger the license monitoring system. Microsoft thankfully provided an easy automated telephone system for dealing with the problem and only took about 6 minutes to re-establish the license.
The next problem is a big mess and was triggered by the same change. DRM alarm bells went off. My Zune software won't start at all, Windows Media Player is throwing network sharing errors all over the place and wont stay open, you can play a non drm song if you play the song from the file.
There are numerous suggestions for clearing this issue discussed on line and at Microsoft, but all the solutions are of the nature of "sometimes this works". I have already tried a number of the solutions and my problem is no better.
I will probably reinstall the OS and my software over the weekend to make sure all issues are gone relating to the change, a pain, but the only way to be 100% sure of everything.
It will mean another call to Microsoft. I'll probably have to explain to a human this time what a noob I am...
