Good morning, good friends. Today, I hopefully get to reap the benefits of having to reformat/reinstall my spare hard drive no less than FOUR times last night.
Well, of COURSE there’s a story, why else would I be writing this? It is, however, a story of colossal DUH proportions.
It has become necessary for me to install Windows 98 to my spare hard drive. North Carolina requires homeschooled children to have an annual (Nationally standardized, computer-scored) achievement test, and the software I have simply will.not.run on XP. Since I want to begin our school “year” with a baseline test, now is a really good time to get this cranked up.
Although it IS possible that I simply install 98 to the spare hard drive, swapping out hard drives gets tedious after a while (NO Son, you can’t watch me work inside the computer! put that DOWN and SHOO!), so installing Vmware became necessary.
Only…Win98 doesn’t see the sound card on the XP machine. No problem, I’ll download the drivers from the manufacturer’s website and install them.
It took me three tries before I realized my critical error. (Ogre? Now would be the time to laugh at me.)
I forgot to “Add Hardware” before I installed the drivers.
Yes, you read that correctly: I was installing a driver for a device that for all intents and purposes didn’t exist in the software profile. And honestly, since this was a clean install ANYway, it was easier to format/reinstall than to attempt editing out the drivers.
DUUUUUUUUUUUUUH!
SO, as the sun kisses the sky, I am busily installing Win98 for the record Fifth time in a row. Once I get it to work, I’ll blog the step-by-step for other homeschoolers that might have the software.