So, about the time she got the Trojan on her machine, mind decided it was time to mess up again. This time, it decided to act like it had only 32MB RAM and a 20MB Hard Drive - Windows would come up and run fine for about a minute into the desktop, then the HDD light would just strobe every second or so and nothing would happen. The mouse would be fine as well as the 'Lock' keys functioned fine.

Occasionally, I when I would restart the machine, I'd notice that it couldn't find the HDD at all to boot from. I noticed in the BIOS sometimes it wasn't there. After cracking open the case, I discovered what appeared to be a 'loose' SATA cable. No biggie - just swap in a new one. Still no effect on the problem.

So, last night I decided to swap the original Maxtor HDD back in, since I'd rehabbed it in BigDawg by slicking the boot partition after all the WinXP weirdness.

Now it's back in the machine with Windows 7 RC running and so far, so good.

If it craps out again though - I'm tossing all this junk out and getting a whole new box. This thing has been WAY too much of a PITA - especially since BigDawg is still sitting right under the desk and hasn't even puked once in 2 years.

'Newer' doesn't always mean 'better.'