Windows Wizard

In late 1993, my wife finally convinced me to buy a computer. After pitching the idea for some time, the essence of her ploy focused on the kids needing it for school. My son was six; my daughters were four and two. Although it was not an absolute necessity, I could foresee the necessity in the near future. I decided we would go shopping after Christmas, seeking a better deal on an appliance that at the time cost between $1600 and $2400.

We lived in Wallingford, Connecticut a few miles south of Meriden, near the heart of the state. We loaded the kids into my wife's Plymouth Voyager and headed for Nobody Beats The Wiz, an home electronics store. Once inside, I was drawn toward Apple computers. My wife found PC's more appealing, citing there was much more software available for them. The discussion went on for a few minutes and was finally settled based solely on price. We walked out of the store with an IBM Consultant with a i486SX-25MHz processor, 2MB of RAM, 170MB Hard Drive, 2400 baud modem and a matching 14 inch color VGA monitor. That was how my long and often tempestuous relationship with Microsoft Windows began.

Over the next year, I added a math co-processor doubling its speed to 50MHz. I also doubled the memory, put in an 512MB hard drive and a 28.8kbps modem, all while becoming more comfortable with the jargon of hardware. Whatever I didn't know, I picked the brains of anyone at work who had a PC. Learning everything I could about this underlying 'thingy' called MS DOS was important. It seemed necessary to fix a lot of the nasty things that happened whenever Microsoft Windows 3.1 misbehaved or balked at running third party software.

Although I was comfortable using the computer, after several months I was far from an expert. I had an account with Prodigy, an online service whose software came pre-installed.

So, I had an email address I didn't use all that often. At some point while I was online, I searched the users names and found the contact information for someone I knew from high school but had not seen for nearly twenty years. He still lived near where I grew up. Afterwards, we exchanged digital correspondence for several months, and I learned what happened to several of the people from my hometown.

Every month new issues of PC magazines arrived via snail mail, and I read them from cover to cover. I learned the computer that my wife and I bought for the kids was already obsolete. Yet, my son was the only one of the kids that used it. All he did with it was play a couple of educational games we'd bought for him. Otherwise, the expensive 'toy' sat idle in my study until I came home from work. Each evening or night, I felt obligated to use it for at least a few minutes, even if all I did with it was check my email and play a few rounds of solitaire.

Oh yeah, there was something else I started to do regularly. A guy at work told me I needed to 'defrag' the hard drive once a month. He wrote down the instructions to follow so I could boot up in DOS and make sure all the file fragments were put back where they belong instead of where Windows left them. Why Windows would scatter things around like that remained a mystery.

After reading about computers and all the new things that were being innovated, I knew my machine was slow. There were programs I wanted to learn to use, but my machine could not handle them. It was not a matter of upgrading it to make it compatible. I would eventually need to replace it. It was hard to justify the expense, though, since I barely used it.

The husband of one of my wife's friends fancied himself a computer expert. We invited the couple to our house for dinner. Afterwards he and I retired to my study where he showed me all sorts of things I didn’t know about MS DOS. Before the evening came to an end, he invited me to go with him to a computer fair the following weekend. Since I had that coming Saturday off, I agreed to go.

Prior to the outing, I felt I had an intermediate knowledge level about PC's. I had performed some minor surgery on my home computer in the course of adding more memory and storage space. I had also learned about disabling devices in basic input/output system (BIOS) settings and assigning interrupt requests (IRQ) to make a modem work. Yet, what I discovered while walking around the fair was not only how little I knew, but also how quickly a PC could be assembled from component parts. Building a my own PC became my goal.

A few months later, in April 1995, my son and I took a trip to Florida to visit my parents. Shortly after we returned home, I took seriously ill. Apparently, I picked up a blood borne bacterial infection through a small cut in my foot. Treatment required hospitalization. Due to a heart murmur, the condition became life-threatening, eventually requiring surgery to replace an aortic valve the bacteria attacked and nearly destroyed.

While confined to the hospital and during my recovery at home afterward, I had the option of watching news stories about the Oklahoma City bombing, the ongoing TV coverage of O.J. Simpson murder trial or reading and learning more about computers. I opted for the latter. The more I learned the more determined I was to buy the parts and assemble my own machine, something designed to run a new operating system I was reading a lot about that would be launched in the fall, Microsoft's Windows 95.

In August, I accompanied my PC savvy friend to another computer fair. Although I intended to buy all the necessary parts, when I learned the prices, I discovered I could have one built for me at the fair for considerably less money than I could do it on my own. A PC clone with a Pentium 100MHz processor, 16MB of RAM, a 2 GB hard drive, a 2 MB graphics card, a 28.8kbps Modem and a 15 inch SVGA monitor saved me a couple of hundred dollars over what I had budgeted to spend for my project.

Like my old machine, it came with MS Windows 3.1, but it was designed for the next generation of software and it could run everything I wanted to use a computer to do. My old computer became my son's which, of course, my daughters could use if needed. With the purchase of the new machine, my self-education as a computer technician began.

Early in the fall, Windows 95 was released. I stopped by a computer store on my way home from work and bought an upgrade copy. For several days, I waited before installing it, wanting to know about all the problems others experienced with the new software. A couple of weeks later, when I was sufficiently satisfied that I could perform the upgrade without a hitch, I settled in at my computer. Committed to perform the task, I followed the instructions exactly.

The upgrade went smoothly. However, the frustrating plethora of problems afterwards led to several reloads of the operating system and all of my software as well as numerous technical support calls to Microsoft. Soon, the phone number, extensions and names of two technicians I'd worked with were committed to memory. Many times, they walked me through booting into safe mode and navigating the system registry in order to fix problems.

Other times, I booted into MS DOS and edited critical Windows system files with a text editor in order to tweak the operating system for my equipment's configuration. They had me try various settings in BIOS and while waiting for the system to reboot, I asked a lot of questions.

A few times the technicians prefaced what they told me to do with a warning like, 'don't go into this part of Windows on your own' or 'don't write any of this down'. Of course, I took notes. I didn't want to call them each time I had a recurring problem. Afterwards, my curiosity piqued, I let my curiosity get the best of me from time to time. The result of my early experience with Windows 95 was I learned more about the new operating system than any end user was expected to know.

The following year, I upgraded my computer several times in many ways. With a beefed up graphics card and a 17 inch SVGA monitor, I was ready to increase the RAM, raising it well above what was necessary. I upgraded the cache memory on the motherboard from 256kB to 512kB, a delicate operating that required the pulling of memory modules from the motherboard with a special tool I obtained from a friend at work. Then, I replaced the processor with a Pentium 120MHz. With all the experience of performing the upgrades by myself, I had maxed-out what I could do with the computer's present motherboard.

On the way home from work one afternoon, I stopped by a computer repair shop in North Haven called Ice Ware. The knowledge I sought was two fold. First, how much would a new motherboard for my computer cost? Second, how hard is it to change a motherboard?

The cost of the upgrade was reasonable. The answer to the second question was a little more daunting. What form factor motherboard did my present computer have, full AT, baby AT or ATX? Does the power supply have AT or ATX connectors? I also learned that If I wanted to switch from a 50 MHz to a 66 MHz bus speed, I'd need a new processor and memory.

Physically replacing the motherboard involved plugging in tiny wires to make critical connections that, if not done properly, could destroy the motherboard. Still, this was what I needed to learn how to do. I'd never have to buy a pre-built computer again.

The more I researched what seemed a 'simple' motherboard upgrade, the more I realized I really would end up building an entirely new computer. The expense of doing that was something I had to clear with my wife, of course. Pitching the idea required all my marketing skills. It was a means of providing the first computer to the girls. The 15 inch monitor I had used before I upgraded as well as the old keyboard and mouse could complete my latest hand-me-down to my son. Once I had approval to spend the money, I could get a new keyboard and mouse for the machine I was contemplating. It was a tough sell, but eventually my wife agreed.

Having been in Ice Ware several times to ask questions over the course of a number of months, everyone who worked there knew me by name, including the owner. I knew I could buy everything I needed to build a computer, but they suggested I let them built it for me instead – just to be safe. What fun was what?

After telling me several horror stories about other people who thought they could build computers had failed, I was not dissuaded. The owner sold me the parts I needed with the caveat that he was not responsible for any damage I did to anything through my lack of experience. However, he promised if I reached a point of not being certain what I was doing, bring the machine in and he'd make it work.

My purchase included a faster processor and faster memory as well as a graphics card with more dedicated memory. I also bought an Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) copy of a newer revision of Windows 95 that was reportedly more stable.

When I had read the owner's manual for the motherboard, identifying every critical part, I was ready to begin. Carefully double checking everything I did before applying power to the new machine, it took well over an hour. It was an interesting challenge. In some ways it was like an erector set or solving a puzzle.

Once assembled and ready, I checked every connection one more time, making absolutely certain I’d done everything the right way. Confident it was a proper build, I closed up the case. I did not anticipate having to redo anything inside. Setting the new beige box into the place where I had just removed the old computer from my desk, I connected the new keyboard and mouse as well as my monitor. Then I plugged in the AC power cord.

The proverbial moment of truth came with a press of the power button.

Fans activated, quickly whirring up to speed. The BIOS screen flashed on the monitor, a sign that at least some of what I had done was right. Then, I heard a beep as the memory test was complete. As expected, the computer told me it couldn't find an operating system. It was simple; I hadn't loaded one yet. Taking a floppy disk bearing the essential DOS and proper instructions to initiate the loading of Windows, I slipped it into the drive slot. Restarted, the computer booted up to a prompt and then loaded the installer program from the Windows CD.

An hour or so later, after following all the instructions, I loaded the drivers specific for the motherboard. Another required reboot followed loading the drivers for the graphics card and the modem. Finally the new system was ready to install all of my software, some of it from floppy and others from CD-ROM. From previous experience I knew It was a lengthy process that would take many hours over several days to complete. For the time being, the new computer was operating as expected, and it was a lot faster than my previous machine.

The next afternoon, on my way home from work, I stopped by Ice Ware to pick up a mouse pad, something I'd neglected to buy for the new computer. The owner greeted me with a helpful offer. 'Bring it in' and he'd see what I did wrong. When I informed him everything on the new computer was working properly, he was surprised. He verbally, though unofficially, certified me a computer technician, intending it as a sort of joke.

Over the next few years, I continued learning more and more about personal computers. As a side job, I built custom computers and repaired or upgraded machines for friends. My kids received new individual computers I built. At times, Ice Ware asked me to help them build some machines when they had large orders of work stations to assemble for a business.

Reconfiguring my system with a boot manager program, I loaded multiple versions of Windows, becoming experienced with each. As a direct result, I was competent at resolving software conflicts with the operating system. Although it was not as user friendly, I tended to use the more stable, business operating system, Windows NT for my personal tasks. Eventually, I learned how to network the computers at home and share the resources. In this way, my kids could send documents to the printer connected to my computer.

Windows, not DOS, was the first operating system I learned to use. As I became an unofficial consultant occasionally doing favors for Ice Ware, when there was a machine brought in for repair with a problem with Windows they could not fix, they called me. Usually, I would give instructions over the phone or I would stop by the shop. After a few minutes I could usually figure out a solution, saving the shop time and money. As a result, I became the Windows Wizard.