In the process of cleaning up a Windows XP (Home) PC, I ended up with a situation where it would get to the 'Windows is starting up...' screen, and just stay there for 20+ minutes. Doing a hard reset didn't help; it would boot back to that same spot and just hang there.
I found this forum post, where they've suggested to plug the PC's power cord directly into the wall instead of a power strip. Since I had just purchased a new power strip, and then plugged that PC (and another one) into it, I thought I'd give it a try.
Yeah, it worked. The PC booted up as fast as XP ever could. I'm assuming the two PC's together must be drawing too much current for the power strip/surge protector, and so the troubled computer wasn't getting enough juice to boot properly...?
I have a UT Starcom PPC-6700 SmartPhone, through Alltel, that I use essentially for running my small business. Alltel's data service add-on (~$40/month) gives me unlimited Internet access with the device, so I can Google search, watch the weather radar from the boat, check email, and get notifications of messages left on the company voice mail system.
On the email side of things, I have the device synchronized with an Exchange server running in my office. I can 'force' the device to sync with the server whenever I feel like reading email, just by clicking send/receive in the phone. With Exchange Server 2003, I can also enable Microsoft's 'Direct Push', which keeps the phone synchronized with Exchange in real-time. There are plenty of articles out there on how Direct Push works, so I won't regurgitate that here, but essentially as messages come in, they're 'pushed' directly to the phone, so I always have the most recent message list in my hand.
One significant problem I've noticed is that with Direct Push enabled, the battery life on the PPC-6700 is slashed severely. I can expect that if I take the phone off charger at 7am, it will be dead (powered off dead) before 5pm. By contrast, with Direct Push turned off and me synchronizing manually 3 or 4 times during the day, the battery will last 3 days pretty easily.
It's weird, because Direct Push is touted as a technology that should save battery life. Instead of the device connecting on a schedule – say, every half hour – and downloading '0' messages while wasting battery juice, it's supposed to be 'smarter' and only connect when there are messages to download.
I can't find the article now, but one writer suggested that if you don't want your device connecting a hundred times a day and downloading messages, don't receive so many emails! I would agree, but I think the problem is bigger than that. I think the problem is with spam, and here's why:
Most of the time, when I 'force' a download with the phone, it will say something like “Email: 0/8” in the phone's Messaging status bar. When it completes the download, though, I might actually only see 1 or 2 of those messages in my inbox. I'm left to assume that the other 6 or 7 were spam...and that the Exchange spam filtering rules don't get applied until the download is requested.
If that's true, then something similar is probably happening with Direct Push enabled. The difference, though, is that Direct Push is causing as many as 8 connections to (downloads from) Exchange to accomplish the same thing. Essentially, it's connecting 8 times, and each time it's just running the rules and putting messages in the spam folder...it's a wasted connection.
[EDIT 2007-05-23]
I almost forgot. One other problem with enabling Direct Push is that people who call me often get sent directly to voice mail. The phone never even rings, because the line is tied up with the data connection. Since the phone spends so much of it's day connected to Exchange, this becomes a problem - think 'teenager tying up the phone all day'.
Some people never learn, I guess. After my first horrible experience trying to upgrade from Windows XP to Vista Business, I said I wouldn't do it again. A few weeks later, here I am trying to upgrade my main computer - the desktop machine on which I do most of the 'important' things.
After a solid half hour, the upgrade let me know it wouldn't continue, because it doesn't like 'Nero Burning ROM'. Then it exited. I removed Nero (even though it's my favorite CD/DVD burning tool), and started the upgrade process again. You don't get to fast-forward to the point you left...you have to re-do that half hour.
This time, it keeps going. It was taking forever (3 hours and we were still 'Expanding' files), but it did warn that it would take 'several hours' to complete, so whatever. I check back after three hours, and all I see is a mouse arrow on an all-blue screen...nothing else. The mouse moves the cursor, but after 20 minutes, it's still just stuck there.
I hard-reset the machine (reset button), and watch anxiously. The BIOS screen just stays up for 4-5 minutes...hard reset again. This time, it gets past the BIOS post and continues setup. Whew.
As I write this, the Windows Vista Business Upgrade has been stuck at 'Expanding Files... 21%' for over an hour. When I click the little red 'X' to close the setup window, it tells me the setup process cannot be canceled at this point, because it could leave my system in a potentially unstable state. That would be funny if it weren't so pathetic...the system is already unusable...since it's stuck in this stupid upgrade.
I'll update this entry when I have some kind of resolution...
I recently tried to upgrade a Toshiba Satellite laptop (Model A35-S159, running Windows XP Pro SP2, fully patched, with BIOS flashed to the latest - September 2004) to Windows Vista Business Edition. Apparently, I'm one of the many people lucky enough to have a computer that, while being ACPI compliant, isn't quite ACPI compliant enough for Windows Vista. I'm not even sure what that means.
I ran Microsoft's Vista Upgrade Advisor, and the machine passed with no problems. I ran the upgrade, and that seemed to go great too (though it took a long time). On the first boot (which should have been into Vista), I got the popular Blue Screen of Death telling me my system's 'BIOS isn't fully ACPI compliant'. Great.
The only bright spot (if you can call it that) is that, if I'm quick, I can catch the boot screen as the laptop powers up and choose 'Earlier Version of Windows', which will take me back to Windows XP.
But that just gets me back to where I was before I ever tried Vista. I can't find any hope on the web, except Microsoft saying the vendors will have to update the BIOS...that's apparently not likely in Toshiba's case, as they say right on their web site they won't support Vista except on PC's with the Vista Capable logo. From their support web site:
Q: If my Toshiba computer does not have a Windows Vista Capable sticker, does Toshiba offer drivers and BIOS upgrades for Windows Vista?
A: No. Toshiba offers Windows Vista drivers and Windows Vista-compatible BIOS upgrades for computer models that have a valid Windows Vista Capable sticker. It may be possible to upgrade to Windows Vista on some Toshiba computer models that do not have a Windows Vista Capable sticker, but Toshiba cannot guarantee that all features of the computer will function correctly after the upgrade. Microsoft’s Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor may be able to indicate whether or not your computer has the minimum hardware requirements for Windows Vista, but a positive report from the Upgrade Advisor is not a clear indication that the specific features of the computer will function correctly after an upgrade to Windows Vista.
I'm not much for conspiracies, but this stinks of 'plot to make people buy new hardware'...
I really enjoyed MSN Radio for a while, and even paid for the subscription to MSN Radio Plus. I gave up on it, though, after Windows Media Player updated to version 11, because the interface changed pretty dramatically, and it was brutally difficult to even find MSN Radio with WMP 11!
Coincidentally, I ran across Pandora Internet Radio around the same time. Pandora works by letting you choose the individual artists (and even songs) you like. Then it plays music from that artist and similar music from other artists. You set up radio stations, with different kinds of music, and it remembers what you like and dislike (you can give each song/artist a thumbs up or down). Best of all, it's ad supported...meaning it's essentially free for the end user/listener.
I got a troubling email from Pandora last week, though (don't get the wrong idea, this was a pretty unusual circumstance...there is no SPAM from Pandora). Apparently, the music industry is trying to get fees raised for Internet radio stations, and Pandora was asking for its listeners to help out by calling their congressperson. Hopefully, Pandora can survive the new legislation, however it comes out.
I had a chance today to try out the Rainbow Portal 2.0 Beta. So far, I'm pretty happy with it. Of course, I struggled with the a checkout of the dev code for a while because I don't have Visual Studio .NET 2005, but once I restarted with a download of the zipped application, the installation went OK.
The only problem I encountered during setup was a Configuration Error (see below):
Configuration Error !
Description: An error occurred during the processing of a configuration file required to service this request. Please review the specific error details below and modify your configuration file appropriately.
Parser Error Message: Unrecognized attribute 'xmlns'.
It turns out this is a problem of IIS trying to make the application use the .NET 1.1 framework. It can be forced to use the 2.0 framework by changing the application's ASP.NET settings (In IIS Manager, right click your Rainbow application, Properties, ASP.NET; then choose the .NET 2.0xxxx framework).
I even had a go at converting one of my more simple custom modules from Rainbow 1.1 to 2.0. It was pretty painless too...
- Open the module's csproj file in C# 2005
- Run the conversion in C# 2005 to convert the project to .NET 2.0
- Remove the references to Rainbow, Rainbow.Settings, and Esperantus DLL's
- Add a reference to Rainbow.Framework.Core.DLL
- Build, and start troubleshooting code issues (mostly namespace issues in my experience)
- Once those issues are out, you add the module to the portal just as in Rainbow 1.1.
I still feel a little blind working with Linux...like I'm constantly bumping into things, then feeling them to figure out what they are. When I want to find them again, I sort of have to stumble around again and the process repeats. It's getting better, but it's just a steep learning curve for a Windows-only boy like me...
My Own Confluence
I've managed now to get a Confluence personal installation running nicely (with hands-on help from Atlassian) inside Ubuntu 6.10.
Confluence seems to be the perfect solution to a problem I've had in managing certain kinds of customer and company information...I can create a 'home' page for each customer, new pages for each of their computers/systems, pages for repair notes and site visits, etc. So far, it's just about perfect...for one thing, all the information is available anywhere I can get an Internet browser fired up, and having complete searchability is a huge bonus.
One other nice benefit is I can configure each customers' entry in Business Contact Manager so their BCM 'home page' points to their 'Home Page' in the Confluence installation. This links the two systems pretty cleanly, as I can quickly pull up their extended information in Confluence by clicking the link inside Outlook.
Of course, Confluence is excellent for managing all kinds of information, and I'm using it daily to store all kinds of phone, meeting, and other data. If I run into problems with this combination, I'll post it here; but for now, Confluence is perfectly filling a huge information management void for me.
Version Control via SVN, too!
I've also now got SVN installed, configured, and working very well on that Ubuntu box. Previously, I had 'local' SVN repositories on 3 different machines at 2 locations. Having a 'real' SVN server means I can consolidate all those projects (sheesh, there are more than I thought!) in one place. While I'm the only developer that uses them, it's nice to just have one system to worry about backing up.
It's worth pointing out that while I found a lot of articles explaining how to install/configure SVN server on Linux/Ubuntu, this one was perfect in it's detail (for me, at least). After that, this article was just as good at helping me move the subversion repositories from the Windows local repositories to the Linux server.
After installing ISA server on an internal network, I noticed that file upload via FTP no longer worked. It took way too much Googling to find this link, which explains the simple solution:
- Right-click the 'SBS FTP Outbound Access Rule' (in a default installation)
- Choose 'Configure FTP' from the bottom of the context menu.
- Deselect the 'Read Only' box on the dialog
- Restart your FTP client application, and voila!
I stumbled across Meebo on another blog, and thought the idea was a good one. Essentially, you embed a little piece of HTML (actually, a flash object) in a web page, and visitors to your web site can chat live with you through it's interface. All you need is a Jabber client on your machine.
It works as advertised, and it's free. The downside (and the reason I gave up trying to use it) is that every time someone visits your page, you get a pop-up window asking if you want to add the person to your contact list. Even on this blog, where I get low traffic, it's incredibly annoying.
According to the developers, this pop-up issue is part of the Jabber standard and won't be messed with. Too bad, I liked the overall idea.
OK, so I get a fair number of requests from clients to rescue, copy, and/or move files that are located on an old, damaged, decrepit, and/or broken Windows machine. Usually the hard drive is fine, sometimes the machine might even be able to boot up. Most of the time, we're talking about hundreds (thousands) of files; documents, QuickBooks records, and most importantly, family pictures.
My usual (and pretty successful) approach has been dependent on whether the machine will boot into Windows. If it won't boot, then I'll slave the machine's hard drive into one of my own machines and copy away. If it will boot, the process depends on what version of Windows they have (or had, as the case may be). Newer versions of Windows (98SE, 2000 Pro, ME, and all flavors of XP) support USB, so I can just plug in my handy external drive and copy away.
If the old machine has Windows NT, 98 (First Edition), BackOffice Server, or something older, I'm back to slaving their hard drive into my PC for some copying.
Here's the problem. I don't like having someone else's old hard drive (full of who-knows-what) in my computer. Also, I don't like messing around inside a computer that's close to a decade old...I find that the dust has settled just right, and to mess with any components could cause an oily-dust-shift (I just totally made up that term) that can kill a processor fan or short out a mobo circuit.
Enter my new plan: a Knoppix Live CD. As long as the motherboard can boot from the CD drive, I'm in business. Boot to Linux, and I have read access to the entire hard drive (or drives). Attach an external USB drive, Knoppix recognizes it, and I'm off to the races. Copy, copy, copy, unplug the drive, take out the CD, and reboot the machine. It's like I was never there.
You gotta love Linux, if only for that kind of simplicity.
OK, there are a lot of services out there to 'speed test' your Internet connection, but this one is pretty fun to do...
You get to watch a speedometer as it tunes in your connection speed.
Several years ago, I bought a Red Hat Linux CD at a local retail store. I never figured it out...I couldn't get it to install, and didn't really 'get' the whole Linux thing anyway. Recently, I gave Linux another look, after reading an article about how a bootable Live Linux CD might be useful in rescuing a Windows system that can't boot.
Since then (just a couple weeks), I've tried both Knoppix and Ubuntu flavors of Linux. I've booted both from Live CD versions, which is sweet for Windows users that just want to check it out without losing their Windows systems. Essentially, Linux loads from your CD drive, and once it's loaded it acts like it would if it were the only operating system on the computer.
Of the two, I like Ubuntu a little better, I think...for two reasons. It comes in 3 different flavors (desktop, server, and alternative install), and if you boot from a Live CD and decide you love it, you just click a shortcut to completely switch over and ditch Windows.
Anyway, I've decided I definitely 'like' Linux now...for several reasons.
- It works. You just run the installer, and Linux figures out how to use the hardware you've got. Printers are easy too...you add them much like you do in a Windows system (wizard style).
- It's intuitive. Well, it's as intuitive for the casual user as is Windows. You have nice, pretty UI's with meaningful buttons and labels...you can find what you want at least as well as on a Windows machine. You can surf the Internet, check email, and type documents largely like you do in Windows.
- It's free...as in no money. Even better, it lets you turn that old junk PC into a really nice server or extra computer for the kids.
- Related to #3. It doesn't demand great hardware to install and run. I have an Ubuntu file server runnning (amazingly well) with 128MB of RAM, a 6GB hard drive, and a 733Mhz processor.
- With Ubuntu at least, adding and removing programs is a breeze. Much like the add/remove programs applet in Windows, you can easily see a list of programs installed on your computer. The big difference is that Ubuntu lets you see a list of all the (free) software available for your computer. If you want it, just check the box, and it installs.
- Updates don't force a reboot. I'm only a beginner here, but Ubuntu has downloaded and installed hundreds of updates, never once complaining that it has to restart to apply the changes.
- Community support - It does feel strange for a Windows guy to be typing on the Linux command line (shell) all the time (sudo this, grep that, nano this, etc.). The best part of that, though, is when you're stuck, you can Google the error you're seeing, and a half dozen forums and articles show up to guide you through. To be fair, I'm comfortable with the Windows (DOS) command line because I've been using it for 12 or so years...I'm confident the Linux shell is just 'hard' for me because it's 'new' to me.
I can see tremendous potential for many of my clients here. Linux plays nice with Windows computers on Windows networks, can act as a file/print server, and a dozen other useful things. The potential is that the price point is low, the reliability is high, and the price point is low (oops, did I already mention that?)
As I get further into this, I want to post more about my experiences with Linux. So far, though, what I've seen is very exciting and promises to help with a number of problems I've seen in the past.
Wow. This is one of the driest, funniest sites I've ever seen...
http://www.dullmen.com
Hours of 'entertainment' in there...
It seems logical...an MSN Radio premium subscription should be accessible from a Windows Mobile 5 smart phone, using the phone's data service. Speed and bandwidth certainly aren't an issue, since I can use the phone as a wireless modem for a laptop, then stream MSN Radio from the laptop.
I tried pasting the URL from media player (in Windows XP) to the location in Windows Media on he mobile device, but that doesn't work either.
Someone has to have written about it somewhere, but I can't find it...
I've found the Windows XP Files and Settings Transfer Wizard (FAST) to be a great tool...you just run it on your 'old' computer, run it again on your 'new' computer, and voila!...your old desktop, files and network connection settings all appear like magic.
I just had a problem, though, that caused a little panic. The situation was that the 'old' computer and the 'new' computer are the same machine. I ran the wizard to an external (USB) drive, formatted drive C: and reinstalled Windows. When I re-ran the wizard, I got a message that apparently means the FAST backup is corrupted:
"The location that you specified does not contain any stored information."
The solution (for me, at least) was to run Windows Update until there were no more updates to be had...install everything. After that, I re-ran the wizard, and the files restored beautifully. Bottom line...the data wasn't corrupted at all, but for some reason Windows couldn't see it.
A few extra minutes of preparation would have prevented the panic. One good suggestion is to run the wizard on the 'old' computer right after you do the FAST backup. If it starts to restore your data, you're in good shape. If you get the above error, delete the backup and try again. Thanks to aumha.org for the tip (though I didn't find it until after I was dead in the water).
Since Wende's giving me a hard time, I took a minute to put up more pics on our Flickr account.
Samples:
Finally, a solution. I must have right-clicked an de-selected the language toolbar 50 times. You'd think I'd lose patience waaaay before this and look for an actual answer.
http://www.computing.net/windowsxp/wwwboard/forum/144689.html
In case that link becomes unavailable, the answer is in Control Panel>Languages and Regional Settings. Look around in there for the 'load language bar on startup' checkbox (that's paraphrased)...
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