Since I'm home this week, I figured now was time for a good re-pave of the ol' T40p's hard drive. (In reality, it's really another hard drive.) I put down Windows 2003 Server and all the related drivers. It's amazing how nice it runs. (Then again 1.5 Gb of RAM and a 7200 rpm hard drive don't hurt!) I have a pretty anal retentive way of building my machines. I basically put down the OS first, then any vendor drivers and BIOS updates (getting the latest versions available), run Windows Update and then install software (as best I can) based upon it's release date.
Since I'm going to do development on the box, I wanted to put down parts of Visual Studio 98 (VC++ 6.0 and Visual Basic 6.0 specifically). The main reason is I often do COM to .NET interop work and it's nice to have these “legacy” tools on the box. Naturally, I dug out my trusty MSDN DVD and started the main setup. The shock was of course that VS98 forces you to install an “updated” Microsoft Java Virtual Machine! The image on the splash screen shows IE4 no less. The problem is if you don't let it, no VS for you! (Said in my best Soup Nazi impersonation [0]). So I said yes which forced a reboot. I then installed VS 98, then the last MSDN that's compatible with VS98, followed by SP5 (which ALSO wanted a reboot). <sigh> Naturally, I then had to run Windows Update just in case. Sure enough, there was an Update for the Microsoft JVM.
So today, I've used JVIEW two times more than in the last oh six months I figure (or more).
Oh well, now I can at least put SQL Server 2000 down ...
End of line.
[0] http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=soup+nazi+sienfeld