Ops: Windows XP sp3 and DayLight savings time

Doh, some one must be saying at Microsoft. If you know mw, you know I use allot of beta and alpha software that still in development stages. At any one given moment I'm testing about 10 or so application in it's primordial stage. I know and expect problems, butt his problem I have with Service Pack Three for Windows xp was unaccepted. By now you know that George Bush passed an act in an energy saving bill, moving daylight savings date. It was not to big of a deal, there were patches well planed for the changes for both OS and software. There a few hick-ups with some automatic clocks, but no big deal. This patch was a part of SP2, and you would think that in SP3 they also would included it, since it is just a roll-up of all the patches to date. But nope some one for got it. Well not really from what I read they decide to not include it and release it as an extra to SP3. Don't ask me why, but it stupid. What is even worse, that the patches that do fix it in Windows Xp don't work with SP3.

So this what you have to do.

A.) Modify some regs, good for several computers since a bat script could easily be made (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/914387)

B.) Download this GUI based time zone editor for windows.(http://download.microsoft.com/download/5/8/a/58a208b7-7dc7-4bc7-8357-28e29cdac52f/tzedit.exe)

 

I went with B since only one computer is bad, and I only live in one time zone.

Little screen shot of what it looks like, and the changes that has to be made.

Hard-Drive upgrade

So where have i been? Why have my post date been screwed? Well my laptop died on me! The hard drive crap ed out on me. I new it was bad, but was just unsure how much i could get out of it.

With that said I'm going to walk you though my experience working with this Dell Inspiron 5150.

• Here is the the belly of the beast. All I'm going to need is my hands and a screw driver you see in the upper right corner.

• Remove the battery and other external connectors before starting.

• I removed two other covers, just to snoop around. The cover in the middle covers the memory. Also note right above the bar code, under the middle cover is a black lever that is used to release the CD-ROM drive. The bottom right is a cover for the the wi-fi.

• In the upper right corner, two screws are used to hold down the hard drive tray.

• The old drive is in the bag. The new drive is already installed in the hard drive tray by four screws. Also note there is an adapter on the IDE connector.

• There it is, the new 60 GB drive. 60 GB may be small, but this not my main computer, and for sure beats the 30 GB drive that it replaced

Final Thoughts:
Over all I'm surprised how easy it is to work with Dell's. In this experience it open my mind to more possibility's, of even upgrading to wi-fi N.