I hadn’t connected the network or any funny hardware so the install went quite quickly. I think the first 10 minutes was spent formatting the hard disk, although it didn’t say so. The whole process was only about 30 minutes and only two reboots. Then I had to install the motherboard drivers and the video card drivers. These gave me my first taste of UAC. It really is a pain and doesn’t seem to add anything because you have no choice but to accept. Maybe one day it will save me from something.
The next piece of software you need is a virus scanner. I’ve been using AVG Free for a few years but I had a look at the choices recommended by Microsoft and chose F-Secure. I downloaded the evaluation version and tried to install it. The installer said it wasn’t compatible with my OS. So, I gave it the flick and got AVG Free again. I really don’t see the point of paying Microsoft to get to advertise your product if it doesn’t actually work.
Then I hooked up a network cable and it worked straightaway. The only gotcha was it named the local workgroup differently to the default XP Home name of Mshome but that was easily fixed. A friend at work had already told me that I had to install the Link-layer Topology Discovery protocol on my XP machines, so I was ahead of the game on that problem. Two hours later, I had 60 Gb copied across from the old box.
Next, I found that the Windows Experience setting on my brand new computer was 1.0. That’s right, even though the video card was there from the beginning, the drivers weren’t. A quick refresh of the Windows Experience and I got 5.5.