George Washington's Computer vs. Windows 10
A bit less than eight years ago when I was building George Washington's Computer (so named, because I have replaced everything on it except the motherboard, CPU, and RAM), I made a mistake. I decided that I would install 32-bit Windows Vista Ultimate instead of the 64-bit version. Despite the fact that I've upgraded from Vista to Windows 7 and now to Windows 10, this decision leaves me mired on the 32-bit version which is seeming like a worse and worse idea. Now, it's possible to upgrade to the 64-bit version using the license that I have, but that would mean wiping the machine and reloading all of the software and data. This is most of the work that's required to actually build a new computer.
Of course, it's also cheaper than building a new computer. And since George's box has a quad-core Intel CPU running at 2.4 GHz, it's pretty fast all things considered. A new computer would be faster, but not enough faster to justify paying to build a new box. And reloading all of the software isn't really worth it to get to 64-bit. So here I am.
I had thought that I might need to upgrade to 64-bit just to get a stable set of video drivers, but NVIDIA finally released 32-bit Windows 10 drivers for my card that don't crash continuously. This makes me happy.
But then there was this afternoon's adventure. I needed to resize an image in Photoshop, so I started up the application, which promptly hung with a hidden window complaining about a bad monitor profile. I thought that I'd fixed this problem, but apparently not. A bit of Googling pointed me in the right direction and I went to delete the profile, but I couldn't because the profile was in use.
OK. I'll reboot. Except first, the system wants to install updates. Fine.
And once it rebooted, I still can't delete the profile, because it's in use.
OK. I'll reboot to Safe Mode. How the heck do you do that in Windows 10? Back to Google...
Once I rebooted in Safe Mode, I was able to delete the offending monitor profile. In fact, I deleted all of the monitor profiles. Then I deleted a few trillion scanner profiles from a MicroTek scanner that we no longer have, because eight years is a long time and drivers are something that companies don't maintain.
And after rebooting one more time, I was able to run Photoshop and resize the image so that I could finish up the project I was working on.
*sheesh*
Of course, it's also cheaper than building a new computer. And since George's box has a quad-core Intel CPU running at 2.4 GHz, it's pretty fast all things considered. A new computer would be faster, but not enough faster to justify paying to build a new box. And reloading all of the software isn't really worth it to get to 64-bit. So here I am.
I had thought that I might need to upgrade to 64-bit just to get a stable set of video drivers, but NVIDIA finally released 32-bit Windows 10 drivers for my card that don't crash continuously. This makes me happy.
But then there was this afternoon's adventure. I needed to resize an image in Photoshop, so I started up the application, which promptly hung with a hidden window complaining about a bad monitor profile. I thought that I'd fixed this problem, but apparently not. A bit of Googling pointed me in the right direction and I went to delete the profile, but I couldn't because the profile was in use.
OK. I'll reboot. Except first, the system wants to install updates. Fine.
And once it rebooted, I still can't delete the profile, because it's in use.
OK. I'll reboot to Safe Mode. How the heck do you do that in Windows 10? Back to Google...
Once I rebooted in Safe Mode, I was able to delete the offending monitor profile. In fact, I deleted all of the monitor profiles. Then I deleted a few trillion scanner profiles from a MicroTek scanner that we no longer have, because eight years is a long time and drivers are something that companies don't maintain.
And after rebooting one more time, I was able to run Photoshop and resize the image so that I could finish up the project I was working on.
*sheesh*