Hooray!

Refuge Mobile is back online!

We're back and better than ever, in fact. After doing some research I decided to go with a solid state hard drive rather than replacing it with the same type of standard disk as came out of it. It's a bit more expensive but all I read said it was both faster and more robust. While I was at it I decided I'd upgrade the size, so I went from 750G to a 1T drive.

The only issue I was having was with the software. The computer was delivered with Windows 8, but did not have the installation disks, nor did it have the software key. I had a copy of Windows 7, which I prefer over 8 anyway, so I just figured I would install 7 and be done with it.

Not so fast.

The copy of 7 I had was a 32 bit, this is a 64 bit computer. No problems, you can change the boot to take a legacy system. Bah. It just doesn't look good on the new computers. So, remove the hard drive, connect to the desktop, wipe it and download a copy of Windows 8 from the Microsoft website (the only thing you have to purchase is the key now). Then I shot a message off to tech support and found that the product registration key is programmed into the BIOS on the motherboard.

Load 8 and be done then, right? Yeah...no. I had some sort of error about the software not being able to load because the file system isn't right. Fortunately the Internet had the answer, I was able to reconfigure the hard drive and load the software from the CD and all is well.

A bit of Classic Shell to restore the start menu button and I'm all set. Now all I have to do is find and reinstall the rest of the software I want.

I also still have the boot disk, so I'm all set there.