Mashing Windows

It’s a challenge, often when it comes to install some hardware/software or emulation like in this case, what’s supposed to take 5 minutes takes half an hour or longer, what’s supposed to take half an hour takes a few hours, and what’s supposed to take an hour or so, takes . . .  who knows!

Error messages continued to plague my install, inexplicably . . . but that’s nothing surprising . . . things go wrong for no reason, no matter how many times you double check the requirement lists . . .

Of course having 2 Windows XP Pro licenses, 2 Windows XP Home licenses, and 1 Windows 2000 licenses (collected from old machines now defunct), I didn’t want to spring an additional $ 283.99 for a new XP Pro license, and I ain’t touching Vista, no way!

Dealing with long issues during the week, with work, meeting and stuff it’s not easy.  Dealing with it on week-end is like collaging 5 minutes here, 10 minutes over there, googling here, technorating there, forums, apple.com, VMware.com, support tickets, reading and re-reading guides . . . then, probably out of desperation, I started contemplating ways to install my XP Pro SP 1 .
Some googling showed up something promising:  Paul Thurrott’s SuperSite for Windows, with some nice tricks on how to morph a Win XP Pro SP1 into a SP2 bootable install CD:  neat-o!

Made the Install CD before lunch, started the install after lunch before going out, and . . .  I got back home to a complete Windows XP Professional install on VMware on my PowerBook Pro with OS X 10.5 Leopard:  part 1 of the mission is accomplished.

Next  it’s going to be migrating application from the Dell to:

• web-based solution like Google Apps for email;
• native Mac applications like NeoOffice for Office Suite;
• migrating Windows only applications that I can’t live without like Microsoft Expression Web;
• and of course all the Firefox extensions that I have gotten used to (goodies).

written by lorenzo