I’m sick of trying to install Windows XP Professional on my machine. My woes started with my buying an emachines desktop PC. The model name is W3107.

I got a 100GB hard disk with the system but it was running Windows XP Home – which means I can’t run either IIS or Apache – even MySQL, SQL Server and PostgreSQL. I read somewhere about a hack for getting Windows XP Home to run IIS. I didn’t want to tamper with my installation so I managed to partition my hard disk using
Partition Magic. I installed Windows XP Professional on the new NTFS partition and suddenly discovered I didn’t have the right drivers.

I spent a lot of time on the emachines website and I was really, really annoyed. For one, every other W-Series Desktop was listed except W3107 so I wasn’t able to find out what drivers I’d be needing. I really, really need it to be on the network because I have some test people that will be checking out my work. I managed to find out that I needed nVIDIA GeForce display drivers, RealTek AC’97 audio Drivers, 8-in-1 Media Reader Software and a driver for a SmartCP Data Fax Modem.

Apart from that I haven’t been able to get the network hardware to work. I’ve installed every single network adapter or modem driver I can lay my hands on but it just won’t work. If I can’t get drivers for Windows what do I do when I finally put Fedora Core 5 on my system next week?

I don’t really know but for now I think I’ll just get a new USB-compatible modem. The most annoying thing is that the forms on the eMachines website don’t work. I can’t send a support request – and each time I try to chat online with support I have to fill in every single detail about myself. Damn eMachines and GateWay.