My blog had an unexpected three weeks vacation.
Here’s why.

About a year ago I thought it would be a good idea to buy a new PC with windows XP before Vista would completely take the market over. But it turned out I was a little late. I could choose between an of the shelf PC that was only slightly better then the PC I had or a custom made PC with windows Vista.
Even though I didn’t like what I heard and read about windows Vista I thought it would be a waste of money to buy a new PC if it wasn’t a real improvement.

I did try to work and play with windows Vista. But it didn’t work very well. I could install the game Dirt but the wheel didn’t work. I tried to configure a network with my old and new PC but although the old PC saw the new one. The new one didn’t see the old one.
When I tried to install my email program I found that to be impossible.
After that my new PC just sat there for the better part of a year while my old PC became slower and slower.

Two months ago I decided that my old PC had become to slow. It took me a minute just to start my mail program and even longer then that to start Firefox.
At first I thought that enough time should have past to give the world a change to get used to Windows Vista. With all the new updates it should be possible to get my wheel and email program running.
Yes and no.
I still couldn’t find the update needed to get the wheel running but I did find an update for my email program Turnpike for only 160 English pounds!!!
Agh. What are these people thinking?
I bought Turnpike ten years ago for only 40 pounds. Over the years I’ve downloaded several free updates and now they want me to pay 210 Euro’s.
I’ve thought about using an other email program. But it’s to much of a fuss. There seems to be no easy way to export/import my email addresses. And the way Turnpike files mail is much easier then other programs.

The alternative was to clone the hard drive of my old PC and install Windows XP on the new PC.
I did so 5 weeks ago and at first everything seemed to go alright. Off course I missed a lot of drivers and it took some doing to figure out which ones I needed. But after a week the PC seemed to work.
Except for the fact that the wheel still didn’t work.

Three weeks ago I had my first Blue screen of death (BSOD).
I pulled the wheel and every thing seemed to be fine.
To be on the save side I went to my dealer to ask for advise and the told me that I should open the PC up to see what kind of motherboard was inside and install those drivers.
After figuring out that I had the Asus P5B and not the Asus PSB motherboard I installed the drivers and everything was fine… for a few days. (Why would they use a font that makes it all most impossible to see the difference?)
But by Thursday night I was again having one BSOD after an other.
Friday I dropped my PC off at my dealer and was told that it probably would be a driver issue and I could get my PC back by Tuesday. Tuesday they told me the motherboard was broke and it would take at least 1.5 weeks.

Yesterday I got my PC back.
They formatted the hard drive for no good reason so I had install my backup. (Only lost two days.)
I’m not quite sure whether the problem is solved. I’ve already had two BSOD and windows is complaining about missing a USB mass storage device driver. Which was start of the problem three weeks ago.
But it seems that the rest of the driver issues are solved and google tells me that the mass storage device driver is a separate problem that has something to do with windows XP.

I haven’t tried my wheel yet but I’m hopeful…