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This is a good recommendation. I always keep a Linux LiveCD of some sort (usually Knoppix because of its plethora of tools) around for diagnostic use. The Universal Boot CD Ive heard of before, but have not used much. It is handy for the things that Greg mentioned, plus some other things. Handy tools to definitely have around.
Ive had some issues where Ive needed Windows to recognize a hard disk in order to get files off the disk. When my hard drive crashed last year, the only way for me to get my data off the computer was to boot into knoppix, access the drive, then copy the data from the disk to a USB drive.
I definitely recommend having at least these tools around, just in case.
Another useful tool to have is ProcessExplorer or just about any process tool from Wininternals. They have tools that will allow you to see all sorts of things for running processes.
Interesting post. Wonder if its a particular ATI card? I have an ATI in my desktop unit here, running XP and dont have any problems like that, and that system has a gig of RAM in it. I'll do some research later on this weekend and see if I can dig up anything.
Today I removed the old forum completely from the system. In its place is a redirection page that will take you to the new forum. Im going to leave that up for about a week, then take it down as all visitors will have received their email regarding the location change.
Glad to hear that SMAKK is BACK! (AC/DC parody possibly in the works!??) Keep me posted on the progress.
NO problem on the email. Glad to see someone else posting for a change. Keep it up. Tell your friends. lol
I just came across a forum that complains about the actions taken
by GoDaddy at the request of MySpace. Yet, in any of those comments, no one places any blame on MySpace for
taking an incorrect action. Granted, GoDaddy probably should have taken a better stance by suggesting that
MySpace contact the host or the owner of the site prior to complying with the request. I think a lot of people
are overreacting to what GoDaddy did. I dont think what they did was wrong, probably just a little too hasty
though.
Interesting topic I think.
Yeah, formatting using 2000 and XP is a little confusing. You have to go into Disk Management, which
can be accessed several places, but can be found under Administrative Tools, Computer Management. There's
an option in the tree on the left for Disk Management. When putting in a new hard drive that hasnt been
formatted, it will recognize the disk as unallocated. This means you have to set up a partition for it, which
can be the entire amount of the disk. I believe it gives you the option from there to format the disk.
If not, once you've partitioned it, if you right click on the partition, the option to format is there.
Definitely not like the old days when you went out to DOS and typed format <<drive
letter>>:
If you have both an SATA and an IDE controller, which alot of PC's have now, then your SATA should be the
primary channel, while your IDE will be the secondary channel, If you're trying to use both an IDE HDD and
another device, cable select will work. However, its really a good idea to put the hard drive as the master
and the other device as a slave. Or basically, so the hard drive is read first. Since I believe the MBR
is going to look for operating systems in the order in which drives are read in the BIOS. Its amazing what you
learn when things dont work.
The interesting thing about Vista is that they're already talking about
a service pack due out possibly later in the year. However, they've already pushed back the next service
pack for XP, which is now slated for sometime in 2008, as Vista is more of a priority than XP. Until then,
have fun patching XP with somewhere around 65 or so additional patches to SP2. The first thing I plan on doing
when I get Vista is turning off all of the bells ans whistles that Microsoft keeps shoving down our throats. I
want a classic environment. The other yuppies running Vista can decide for themselves how they wish to
run. I posted a summary of Vista requirements and whatnot on the MT site last night. I'll be
interested in seeing what Vista does out of the box. I would be super impressed if I didnt find some bug
within the first week.
Greg, I seriously need to get some time together to get my 133 back up and
running. I miss the days of 3.1, when things actually worked and there was no registry, or group policy, or
user login. Just plain old DOS. Those were the days man. “Ummm, how do you run
ScanDisk?” Im thinking we need to have another building day where we just get together and put computers
together. Wish my home office was big enough to support having all of that stuff though. Been thinking
of building up one of my old 333's as well with 98. Ive actually got a 333 at home running Win2k server
at the moment. Im using it for DHCP, since the damn DHCP on my router stopped working a few months back.
I may be in the market for a new router in the next few months. Ive had mine for about 4 years and its on its
last leg. I may try upgrading the firmware on it,but that means internet down time.
Yeah, like I said earlier, I understand that people are busy. It happens. I also understand the
desire to be AWAY from the computer. And Greg, I feel your pain dude. I hate it when there's a
never ending battle to keep your computer running. It sucks huge monkey balls.
As far as
Vista is concerned, technically, its kinda low on my list of priorities for awhile. Im currently working on a
huge development project at the moment. After that is my transition to tech, where Vista will be one of the
things I'll get to work with. Ive seen those articles on Vista and a lot of the reasons to not get Vista
are lame. However, I think once its been out long enough to get a service pack applied to it, it should be a
lot better. One of the things I'll be looking to do initially is start turning off all of the glamorous
crap like aero and getting back to the classic mode. Im pumped about the image based install.
That'll make configuring Windows the way you want it a lot easier. My biggest beef so far is that Vista
is supposed to take up 16 GB with a default install. Thats crazy!!!! Also I cant see upgrading my
computer to more than a gig of RAM and not being able to run decently is stupid. At least right out of the
box. One thing I am happy to finally see is that Vista now will prompt you if you dont have correct
permissions to escalate your permissions by typing in a username and password with the correct privileges.
Linux and Unix have had that feature for awhile. One thing Im also happy to see is that Microsoft is now
cracking down on third party software vendors writing out to the kernel. In my opinion, communicating with the
kernel is one thing, but you shouldnt be allowed to write out to it. That could cause serious problems.
I wish they would have finished the WinFS though. I think they could have done a lot of good with improving
the file system by use of a relational database. Basically, they're saying that Vista doesnt have a lot
of features that arent already available for Windows XP (IE7, Windows Defender). Mostly, its a lot of security
fixes and improvements, which I'll be interested to see. Only problem is that in order to upgrade to
Vista, you better have a DVD-ROM handy, as its coming out on DVD. Drivers are also going to be a huge issue,
but they usually are for new versions of Windows. While Microsoft has included a lot of drivers, there is also
a good chance that older hardware, as well as lesser known hardware vendors, wont have compatible drivers right
away.
As soon as I have more data, I'll post it.
Ok, so MitCom sounds cool and seems like a good idea. My question to you, is this
what you would want to drive our web design services we've been talking about? Ive also been thinking
about doing some more tech work on the side as well, and making it all one company. Perhaps we use the Mightor
Technologies name as the parent and MitCom as the subsidiary or something. I havent thought it out enough, as
Ive been sick the last few days, but lets discuss this more.
Dude, dont even get me started. Ive been thinking about some stuff that this
would apply to. Lets discuss this sometime and get some things hashed out. I like the idea though.
Greg, Scott's right, change the power supply. And one thing you shouldn't forget, even though the possibility is remote, back up all of your stuff. Sure as hell beats paying about a grand a piece to have your hard drives sent in
Just from thinking about this a little bit, and from my many checks to Digg and Slashdot, it seems to me that a more technically savvy user might want to install some freeware software on their PC in order to monitor such things as processes and power usage to be able to sooner detect hardware failure. Granted there is no way to detect all hardware failure, but if we were to monitor more things closely, we might have a better chance of detecting problems before they become too serious.
Yesterday, I found an interesting piece of software, freeware of course, that throttles back any process that starts to take over a system. All processes in Windows have a priority and what this software does is demotes processes using up large amounts of the CPU. I dont remember what the name of the software was right off the top of my head, but I'll go looking for it when I have a moment and try to figure out what it was.
Its always been my opinion to never use something in its first generation and I know Greg and I practice this a lot with newer versions of Windows. However, I know we're both guilty of forgetting this for other things, even though we try to be conscious of the fact that its first generation. Seems to me that anything thats “first generation” is still beta, as it hasnt been in the field that long. And Greg and I both have experience with breaking things that have just been released.
Im thinking of having a “Lets see how we can break Vista” party as soon as its released, as im going to start testing it anyway for some work related projects.
Update: I found the link for the process program I mentioned previously.
http://www.lifehacker.com/soft…..221204.php
Enjoy
Good to hear you're not dead. Im definitely thinking we need a coding day, especially after some
of the stuff we discussed last night. Over the next couple of days, Im going to tweak the layout on the site
to add some of the things I talked about last night: the black background and the gray text. I may still mess
with the drop shadowing using CSS. For those interested, here's the link:
http://www.webtoolkit.info/dem….. Its actually a pretty sweet idea. What it does is
creates two overlapping boxes, with the outer box slightly off from the inner box. Then what you do is fill
the outer box with a color to give it a shadow effect. When I get a chance to experiment with it, I'll
post the steps so you can see how it works.
I hate group projects for that very reason, and if I were teaching that course, I
would find some way to grade on individual performance through some sort of interview process or demo. If you
dont know your software or the pieces that are written, then its very easy to grade that way. There are
several things I have thought about regarding that. As much as I hate group projects, though, very seldom do
you do that kind of work on your own, which is the entire point of the course, which is to introduce students to the
entire process, including morons who dont do their work.
Ive found that most of my time spent on the internet is researching things im working on. I hardly
ever spend any time on the net just goofing around or whatever. The only places I really go, with exception to
the Mightor Industries Web Forums (obvious plug) and Attic Inc, are Slashdot, Digg and CNN. I frequent my
email a lot just because its become obsessive habit. Other than that, I dont really do much on the net.
There arent a lot of interesting places I like to go anymore. I may come across a forum on programming but
thats usually when im looking for something specific. Half of the time, Im researching or working on something
that requires internet usage.
