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IF:
THEN:
OR IF:
THEN:
Failed to attach disk 'C:\Users\howto\AppData\Local\Packages\46932SUSE.openSUSELeap15.5_022rs5jcyhyac\LocalState\ext4.vhdx' to WSL2: The system cannot find the file specified.
THEN:
> wsl --unregister openSUSE-Leap-15.5
> wsl --install -d openSUSE-Leap-15.5
OR IF:
Error: 0x80070422 The service cannot be started, either because it is disabled or because it has no enabled devices associated with it.
THEN:
Turn Windows features on or off
Check Windows Subsystem for Linux
run --> services.msc
WSL Service --> Automatic --> Start
Reboot (if wsl won't start after the above)
- While installing Windows 11, if your computer does not meet the hardware requirements, you will see a message stating, "This PC can't run Windows 11." Windows 11 setup blocked due to missing hardware requirements.
- When you see the above message, press Shift+F10 (Or Shift+fn+F10) on your keyboard at the same time to launch a command prompt. At the command prompt, type regedit and press enter to launch the Windows Registry Editor.
- When the Registry Editor opens, navigate to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Setup, Right-click on the Setup key and select New > Key.
- When prompted to name the key, Type LabConfig and press enter.
- Now right-click on the LabConfig key and select New > DWORD (32-bit) value and create a value named BypassTPMCheck, and set its data to 1.
- Once you configure the BypassTPMCheck key-value under the LabConfig key, close the Registry Editor, and then type exit in the Command Prompt followed by enter to close the window. You will now be back at the message stating that the PC can't run Windows 11.
- Click on the "X" button in the Windows Setup dialog, then confirm, Yes.
- You will now be back at the screen prompting you to select the version of Windows 11 you wish to install. You can now continue with the setup, and the hardware requirements will be bypassed, allowing you to install Windows 11.
So I thought it would be fun and easy to simultaneously de-register VMs from one datastore path and register them on the identical datastore but through a private GB interface while also exporting an ancient WinXP VM require for iDRAC from some random volume on one computer to my VM volume on another computer utilizing two different hypervisors (both of which can hypothteically read *.ova) and deleting unused zvols from FreeNAS while copying TBs of data from external drives to UNRAID while also attending to phone calls and answering emails today. You know what? It wasn't.
On each my computers with a desktop (2xWindows, 1xOSX, 2xLinux) resides five (5) browsers (Edge, Opera, Vivaldi, Chrome & Firefox) and on each browser resides 70+ tabs. Given memory requirements, I keep these cultivated tab-farms in browser, but only run one browser at a time. Occasionally I will need to pull up another 70+ tab-farm browser to find some information, but keeping it up longer than a few moments is a dangerous game as I never kill my current browser. When my current browser does eventually crash (they all eventually crash), then and only then do I restart a previous browser as a new current default.
This is the way.
On each my computers with a desktop (2xWindows, 1xOSX, 2xLinux) resides five (5) browsers (Edge, Opera, Vivaldi, Chrome & Firefox) and on each browser resides 70+ tabs. Given memory requirements, I keep these cultivated tab-farms in browser, but only run one browser at a time. Occasionally I will need to pull up another 70+ tab-farm browser to find some information, but keeping it up longer than a few moments is a dangerous game as I never kill my current browser. When my current browser does eventually crash (they all eventually crash), then and only then do I restart a previous browser as a new current default.
This is the way.
List of UUIDs for HDs and Snapshots:
C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox> .\vboxmanage list hdds | more
Delete those motherfuckers:
C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox> .\vboxmanage closemedium disk 5dc7f9f9-74a1-4e28-b2a4-ccd0cb3a7d25
To assign a UUID discovered in the error message when trying to start a VM or assign an HD to a VM:
C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox> VBoxManage internalcommands sethduuid "G:\VirtualBox VMs\VERITAS_VAR.vdi" 000607c1-b714-4e4f-90d0-e9d91e67edda
C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox> .\vboxmanage list hdds | more
Delete those motherfuckers:
C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox> .\vboxmanage closemedium disk 5dc7f9f9-74a1-4e28-b2a4-ccd0cb3a7d25
To assign a UUID discovered in the error message when trying to start a VM or assign an HD to a VM:
C:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox> VBoxManage internalcommands sethduuid "G:\VirtualBox VMs\VERITAS_VAR.vdi" 000607c1-b714-4e4f-90d0-e9d91e67edda
Years ago my hetero-lifemate witnessed a demonstration of vMotion in their lab where they kicked off a hollywood movie in *.avi on a vm, then WHOOSH vMotion'd the guest TO ANOTHER HOST IN THE CLUSTER :D This was awesome, as the movie they were watching never even flinched. Fast foward like, 10-years and they've automated vMotion to auto-balance load across all the hosts in the cluster, which is apparently awesome if you're watching a goddamn movie on Windows. My SLES boxes however LOSE THEIR FUCKING MIND each and every time.
When Windows 95 was first released, IIRC it came on 30 floppy disks. It was later released on a shiny new, "CD-ROM" where it remained for a very long time. Having shied away from optical media this past decade, I ordered my first standalone Windows install media since Windows ME came out in 1999 on USB. Here, for comparison, I happen to have, thirty floppy disks.
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Who write this shit?
RuntimeBroker.exe is a safe Microsoft process included in Windows to assist with Windows Store app permissions. With a light system footprint of more or less 5,000 K of RAM being used, it does not affect performance.
RuntimeBroker.exe is triggered by Windows Store apps. If there are no Windows Store apps open, this process won't run.
Unsurprisingly, I narrowed down my THIRTY PERCENT CPU USAGE and ONE-HUNDRED PERCENT DISK UTILIZATION to this ass process. And I wasn't (nor do I ever, to my knowledge) run "Window Store apps." Ugh.
Kill it, and we're golden.
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I just discovered Win10 ships with IE11 as well as the new Edge browser, because the new Edge browser cannot function as a full browser, so those times you need to do something like say, view a PDF in-browser, they suggest launching IE11. If you always need two browsers to do stuff...why create and release the Edge browser?
Don't answer that.
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I estimate there are approximately 5 million articles written about Microsoft networking. None of which discuss why "DNS server isn't responding" is a completely bullshit summation, nor why only a system restore can ever fix it. Surely someone, somewhere (other than me) has to be completely fed up with this nonsense.
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My son was more than thrilled when his new video card allowed him to play Skyrim in Ultra High Mode. Exceeded his expectations, he told me. So I got his old one, the Radeon HD 5440 (I'd purchased two a couple years back, one for his sister and one for him). I decided it was time to build a mobile dual-boot box. When I am home, my laptop is always adjacent my desktop. When I am not home, however, I rely solely upon my laptop. It would be nice to have another desktop adjacent it.
Enter Bill's underwhelming 2008 Acer Aspire. I replaced the anemic drive with a 7200rpm and loaded openSUSE on it, stuffing GBZ's old frame buffer in it - a majestic step up from the onboard video. I updated the BIOS, maxed out the RAM at 4GB, and installed Windows 10 on a second hardrive. After careful consideration, I ordered a quad-core Phenom 9750 to replace the dual-core Sempron and an SSD drive for Windows 10. Once I get those last two installed, it should make an adequate small form factor gaming rig and part-time server for my out-of-town excursions.
When I got my new work laptop, I simply swapped out the docking station and started using the new one right where the old one sat. When I temporarily relocated my office to Pawnee Rock this past work week, it marked the first time I'd used the laptop standalone - without external mouse, keyboard, or monitor.
This new laptop replaces my aging Core Duo chip with a nice i5 and doubles the RAM to 8GB. Its also backlit and weighs a fraction what the other did. No, seriously. It is far lighter and makes all the difference in the world in my backpack. The downside to all this lightness is the unusually small keyboard, which I found especially frustrating during a particularly frantic evening prior to a big application install in preparation for go-live.
That night, I ordered the above mouse from my Amazon wishlist (while this does indeed mark my third Cyborg R.A.T3 mouse, at $40 it was considerably less expensive than my other two - and the coloring reminded me of the rebel forces on Star Wars: The Old Republic). Knowing the shipment would take a day of transit, and preparing for the go-live, I figured I could pick up a decent keyboard at Wal-Mart (while they now carry the Razer BlackWidow, I was hoping for something far less expensive for my second office). I initially settled on a nice, ergonomic Logitech, but was shocked to find a surprisingly well-built, backlit gaming keyboard form a manufacture I wasn't familiar with - and for $20 less!
I am more than pleased. While its not mechanical, the keys are freaking enormous! And it comes with all the bells and whistles I look for in an appropriate unix input device - solid construction, heavy keys, and a braided cable.
BOOM!
Rec'd the following notice via email the other day:
When Microsoft acquired Skype in 2011, we brought together our communication technologies to help you stay closer to friends, family and colleagues. And, if you're like millions of other people who use a number of Microsoft's services (for example, Outlook.com for email, Bing, Xbox, Office 365, etc.) we're making life a little easier for everyone. How? Well, most of Microsoft's consumer services are being brought together under a single Microsoft Services Agreement and a consolidated Microsoft Privacy Statement.
I cannot begin to tell you how much easier life is now that this has happened! Thanks Microsoft! Always making life easier for me. I was downright burdened with all those disparate service agreements and differing privacy statements. BUT NO LONGER! Life really did just get a little bit easier for everyone.
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Each of the children have a desktop, two laptops, and an iPhone. I have two desktops, two laptops, an iPhone, and a Droid. I also have four running servers here at the house, two PlayStation 3's a Sony connected multimedia Blu-Ray player, Chromecast, the garage Powermac, and any number of virtual machines, all connected through the same router.
We are running collectively, in no particular order:
iOS
OSX
Android
Windows 7
Windows 8.1
openSUSE 12.3
openSUSE 13.2
HP/UX
CellOS
Yet my daughter's 8.1 laptop can ping external domain names (both internet and DNS is working) and Windows Update works, but applications cannot reach their update servers and none of the browsers can reach anything even if given an internal IP address! Can you imagine the expression on my face when the Windows Network Troubleshooter told me it couldn't identify the problem in connecting to a private IP? And I do use that term loosely. Windows Network Troubleshooter, since its inception, has been unable to solve any of my networking dilemmas, ever. I have no idea why they continue to roll it out with every version of windows. Possibly to alert some furrowed-brow Facebook-poster that the reason they are disallowed from accessing the internet is because their laptop is powered off or something to that effect. Her laptop can ping google.com, but can't connect to the gateway IP address in a browser (or a private webserver running on an alternate port).
What hasn't helped is any combination of netsh, Set-NetIPInterface, using built-in wi-fi, wired ethernet and even a USB wireless interface (though I assume the only people suggesting that have no knowledge of networking), turning off the firewall, disabling anti-virus (really?), running anti-malware and trojan killers (which I really was hoping was the culprit), deleting and recreating the devices, updating the drivers, rebooting the router (I know, I know), and sfc /scannow (although I credit sfc /scannow with the ability to finally install malwwarebytes which previously failed with Could not call proc) or even hardcoding the interfaces with static values.
Despite this rampant asininity, I learned how to create an Administrator account on Windows 8.1 (not that it afforded the authority to take ownership of system files - or let me delete files already owned by administrator) and how to boot into safe mode (shift-restart) <- because F8 would have been too simple. Although Win8.1 disallows IE from being launched as Administrator - which is fantastically hysterical. And by fantastically hysterical of course I mean astonishingly frightening. I can think of a handful of reasons for this, none of which are complementary.
This command will place an Administrator account on your Win8.1 box
Afterwhich you should be able to force ownership and deletion (although I ran this in recovery mode cli):
takeown /F C:\{troublesome_folder}\* /R /A
rmdir /S /Q C:\{troublesome_folder}\
But I was surprised to discover that launching regedit in a recovery console doesn't give you the system's registry, rather what looks like the recovery console's registry? Which wouldn't be a big deal except the registry editor disallows certain keys to be deleted by the Administrator when logged in as Administrator. But of course it does. So I decided to see if I could telnet to the web port on my internal server, and that's when I discovered telnet was no longer installed on Windows. No idea when that happened, but a quick double-click of putty and a new error helped me troubleshoot - Unable to initialise WinSock <-- Yes, with the British spelling.
Deleting the following keys from the registry, then rebooting...
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Winsock
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Winsock2
...got me to a new error to troubleshoot, Socket type not supported (once again using putty), but also disabled DNS. To re-enable, I had to find, then download winsock.inf (because I couldn't find it anywhere on the computer). This is here for my future enjoyment of Win8:
winsock.inf
Another reboot (for the winsock) but still no browser access - and windows network troubleshooter can now tell me my ethernet connection has no configuration, but it can't tell me WHY - even when the IP, netmask, gw, and DNS are all hardcoded...and now I have a "limited" connection on both wi-fi and cabled ethernet because with the reset, her laptop thought she was on a public network. The "why" of this is my fault, coupled with the nonsensical judgments of Microsoft. The reason her network connection is considered "public" is because I opted to not share folders and printers, and the ONLY REASON anyone would EVER CHOOSE to NOT SHARE is if they were on a public network, right? Which is why I found it so difficult to revert back to private - it makes no goddamn sense. But figuring this one out was as easy as Google, whereas applying the change was far less transparent. The obtuse calisthenics one needs to go through in order to change from "Public" to "Private" is a veritable cathedral of dumb, requiring modifying the Local Security Policy, which is apparently unavailable on certain "editions" of Windows 8.1 in what I assume is a hidden nomenclature of appended Home/Premium/Ultimate/Professional/Enterprise, and obviously not one which comes preloaded on a $300 Asus notebook for a 10-year old girl. Because she would never need to modify her Local Security Policy, right? It just works? So, back to the registry! Only...the registry already had the correct value (1) for a Private connection in the DWORD - oh noes - endless rabbithole is endless!
In conclusion, I'm considering a "refresh" which is less horrific than a "reinstall" but utterly mired in layers upon layers of asininity, most of which I already assume will introduce far more problems than are corrected.
I will understand if my daughter hates me. I hate me right now too.
For example:
[SOLVED] Windows 8.1 Change PC Settings Not working [SOLVED]
"My USB mouse had come uplugged! I couldn't click anything - works now!"
Really? Awkwardly, the fix was just as nonsensical:
powershell -ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted Add-AppxPackage -DisableDevelopmentMode -Register $Env:SystemRoot\ImmersiveControlPanel\AppxManifest.xml
Why would anyone ever have to do that? Don't answer that.
Additionally, I can ping external addresses from the commandline and Windows Update connects and works, but antivirus/anti-malware programs can't reach the internet for updates, and chrome returns:
DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_NO_INTERNET
And since we're discussing Win8[.1], how about launching Google Chrome and Windows asking you, "How do you want to open this type of link (http)" and giving you the sole option of, "Continue using IE?" Who comes up with this crap? What I thought would be an easy fix was going into Default Programs and associating *.html with Chrome. Guess what? ITS NOT AN OPTION. I guess Microsoft finally showed them who's boss! Even when I drill down and set it manually, it doesn't return an error, but continues using Internet Explorer no matter what I set it to.
Now that's how to get market share!
God I hate Windows.
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I didn't want yet another credit card (and at 14% it rivals my Dillard's card for highest APR), but after they offered me $50 off the rather substantial total, I jumped at the chance. So with only $38 in tax and free shipping - and with the understanding he's going to utilize the mid-level video card I bought him this time last year, his savings paid for exactly one half of the following:
1TB WD 7200rpm drive "Black"
4.0GHz AMD FX-8320 FX-Series 8-Core "Black Edition"
Corsair Vengeance Pro 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 2133 MHz (PC3 17000)
MSI ATX DDR3 2133 Motherboard 970 GAMING
Antec Earthwatts 650-watt power supply
Sentey® Gs-6006 Z-tron Gaming Computer Case
DVD-ROM optical drive
Thermal paste
I matched him dollar-for-dollar so he could decide exactly where he wanted to put his money (after giving him various bottleneck scenarios) and I'll have him turn every screw and hit every keystroke so he will have built it entirely by his own hands. I still need to find my old static strap...
I've read quite a few articles recently on the retirement of Internet Explorer. "Finally," they all say, but there's no mention of how the Windows operating system is supposed to run without it, since that was Bill Gates' claim to the State Department in the late 90s. No mention whatsoever.
At work, we're not allowed to run anything but IE8. Which is problematic since many web apps no longer support it. And since many web apps support "only" IE10, I can only assume the new Microsoft browser will be IE10 compatible, which probably means its going to suck balls no matter how lightweight it is. I can't even comprehend how little a developer would care how fast "Spartan" maligns code.
But none of that matters anymore. Because corporate America is finally shifting to Mozilla.
I installed my first Netscape browser - Navigator - in 1995 from a floppy my ISP provided me. I was grinning like an idiot because I didn't have to pay for it (browsers were purchased and installed like applications back in the day). Even way back then people understood IE to be a substandard product (having used NCSA Mosaic on Sun, Navigator was light-years ahead of IE's rebranding in polish and rendering). Anthropomorphising corporate America, TWENTY FUCKING YEARS LATER it lifts its gigantic, bloated head, and rather than make good on their two-decade threat to outlaw Firefox, they're going to embrace it.
What's next, legalization of weed? Forbidding scientists from advising Congress? Oh, wait.
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Text message from my son:
Hey Dad, I was thinking about modding and Skyrim and my computer, and how its slow and doesn't have all the best stuff and there's a lot of folders and games and more junk. So I was thinking of building my own computer. If we could get together and build the best PC it would be like father-son bonding time and I have some cash to throw in there for some parts that we would need in order to build this. Plus, since we don't have a Lotus to work on together, we can work on this instead. I want to know what you think about this and let me know because I think it would be fun to do.
A cursory glance reveals an 8-way 5.0GHz AMD chip is within budget...
Its been cold here in Newton, Kansas, and I haven't been hanging out in the garage much. At some point I wondered if, given all the time I spend in my office, it wouldn't be prudent to either bring the garage subwoofer into my office, pairing them with my Infinity SM82s, or...
I decided to swap speakers, pairing the Infinity with the subwoofer for the much needed bass they were obviously lacking (and where it would be needed most, in the garage) and they sounded great in there! But you know what else sounded fantastic? Probably more than fantastic given the absurdity of what I'd done?
My new garage speakers towering over me on my desk. I couldn't be more pleased. They freaking rock. No matter what I throw at them, they rock. I'm now in the market for an inexpensive PCIe soundcard.
Oh, and that's Nymph on the openSUSE LXDE screen (VirtualBox VM via RDP) and Ikaros on the Windows screen. I've been watching Heaven's Lost Property and listening to a lot of Babymetal :P
Attaching 3rd Gen iPod Shuffle to Win8.1 laptop = All good :)
Attaching 3rd Gen iPod Shuffle to Win7 desktop = All good :)
Attaching 4th Gen iPod Shuffle to Win8.1 laptop = All good :)
Attaching 4th Gen iPod Shuffle to Win7 desktop = All good :)
Attaching 3rd Gen iPod Touch to Win8.1 laptop = All good :)
Attaching 3rd Gen iPod Touch to Win7 desktop = All good :)
Attaching the iPhone 4S = Win8.1 laptop = All good :)
Attaching the iPhone 4S = Win7 desktop = All good :)
Attaching 3rd Gen iPod Nano to Win8.1 laptop = All good :)
Attaching 3rd Gen iPod Nano to Win7 desktop = Keeps CLI DNS resolution and network connectivity, but disables all browser connectivity (Opera, Firefox, IE, Chrome) until forcibly disconnected.
Attaching 3rd Gen iPod Shuffle to Win7 desktop = All good :)
Attaching 4th Gen iPod Shuffle to Win8.1 laptop = All good :)
Attaching 4th Gen iPod Shuffle to Win7 desktop = All good :)
Attaching 3rd Gen iPod Touch to Win8.1 laptop = All good :)
Attaching 3rd Gen iPod Touch to Win7 desktop = All good :)
Attaching the iPhone 4S = Win8.1 laptop = All good :)
Attaching the iPhone 4S = Win7 desktop = All good :)
Attaching 3rd Gen iPod Nano to Win8.1 laptop = All good :)
Attaching 3rd Gen iPod Nano to Win7 desktop = Keeps CLI DNS resolution and network connectivity, but disables all browser connectivity (Opera, Firefox, IE, Chrome) until forcibly disconnected.
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I have been plagued for months with my Windows taskbar randomly shutting down to the point it no longer accepts mouse or keyboard integration; I can't click anything on the taskbar and the Windows key doesn't launch the start menu. I can always left-click on apps I bring to the forefront through Alt-Tab cycling, and occasionally launch new ones via PowerShell since that is almost always running as well. During this time I also cannot get applications to minimize and redraw the desktop. The only thing more infuriating than not knowing what causes this, is reading internet "solutions" from other people who don't know what causes it (most believe its a broken mouse, others a virus, and 90% end up reinstalling Windows).
Today, I finally have a usable workaround:
- In PowerShell start wmic
- wmic:root\cli>
- PASTE THIS --> process where name=”explorer.exe” call terminate
- Answer "Y" to all execute questions
- Should that not fix it (and it usually does), run next step -
- wmic:root\cli> process call create “explorer.exe”
OR
- In PowerShell start an Administrator shell, Start-Process PowerShell –Verb RunAs
- net stop winmgmt
The Windows Management Instrumentation service is stopping.
The Windows Management Instrumentation service was stopped successfully.- net start winmgmt
The Windows Management Instrumentation service is starting.
The Windows Management Instrumentation service was started successfully.
The Microsoft Hotfix: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2547244
More strenuous fixes here.
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It used to amuse me to no end imagining Microsoft collecting metrics on Internet Explorer only to discover it was only ever used once, to install Firefox (and later, Chrome). Window's "Hide Update" function was a godsend when first introduced, allowing those of us in the Western Hemisphere to mask the fact that the Uzbekistani language (among others) wasn't installed on our systems - and it seems to work really, really well.
Excepting the Bing Bar, which, despite my best efforts, will regularly "unhide" itself as an annoying reminder I'm not using it. At this point I can only assume, given what are probably terrible use statistics, rather than stop promoting the Bing Bar, they'll simply force it upon us through integration in a future release of IE. But by all means, if you're a fan of resource-sapping software bloat, circa 1996-style toolbars, bing, or targeted consumer marketing, install away!
In a related incident of cult-like propaganda, Windows 8.1 update KB2919355 (threat assessment self-identified as, "Important") moved the Windows App Store icon from its obscurity on the spammy apps page to...my taskbar. Yep. Pretty fucking important.
I promptly deleted it.
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I've had some challenges at work lately, and they all revolve around Internet Explorer. Earlier, attempting to fulfill my annual online ethics & security training, I discovered that IE11 far surpassed the supported version we're allowed to run, IE8 (this, despite working for a Top-Tier technologies company - but I digress). Naturally, I did what any of you would have done - I dusted off (literally) my old Win98 Second Edition CDROM and installed a VirtualMachine, getting as far as a gorgeous 32-bit 1280x1024 desktop (even installed Plus!) before I found Oracle's guest additions don't run on Win98.
My next step was equally as obvious when I carved out some space on my ESX host - VMware tools does (unofficially) run and load (kinda) - at least enough for networking! But that's when I discovered Win98 shipped with IE5 - not IE8 (I had no idea - who can even remember that far back?) - and was unable to upgrade for a whole host of topographical machine-language emulation reasons even I didn't fully understand.
At wits end, I tested an even more far-fetched theory and discovered IE11 ("its a new browser, it might just surprise you") ran the training just fine in something called, "Compatibility Mode."
But I hit my new low today when I called my boss, and asked him how to bookmark a webpage.
(Note to self: Its an orange star on the far right of the page, under the address bar.)
Life has been pretty good ever since I offloaded all web-browsing to a hefty server I access via RDP, bought a laptop which outperforms everything else in the house combined, got my work laptop back, and bought a 27" inch flat-panel half price at Best Buy with 0% financing.
The kids have their new video cards, and now, I finally doubled my desktop memory - kids are next. I did look for an upgraded processor I could plug into the AM3 slot on my motherboard, but it turns out despite the newer six-core Phenom-II X6, my "Black Edition" X4 965 is still the preferred processor for [AMD] gamers in that form-factor.
Go me.
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Not wanting to sound like some gushing Apple fanboy nor some Microsoft hater, the reason Apple supports two different operating systems, IOS and OSX, is because while running a full desktop O/S on a tablet would be retarded, running a tablet O/S on a desktop would be even more retarded. Enter Windows 8.
Granted once I got the hang of the enormous and annoying "Start Screen" and started utilizing it like a glorified Start-button program menu (mostly by deleting all those annoying "apps") I could at least appreciate the idea. That said, I can't seem to window-ize and/or float the "apps" for use while I'm working in another program - nor can I seem to "close" or "exit" them when I'm done with them, so they endlessly cycle through Alt-Tab until some mysterious decay-time is reached - but all that could just be me. Suffice it to say if there's a way to change the functionality of that mess I couldn't find it. In fact, I couldn't find anything. Before I was able to use any application, like PowerShell, I had to ask the computer to find it for me, as there is no easy way to browse the installed program tree hierarchically anymore (though now that I say that it might be somewhere on that dizzying second "apps" page).
Excepting maybe accidentally deleting the "share app" that allows me to send links from other "apps" in my app-delete-fest above and seemingly no way to re-install it (the app store is also woefully misnamed in this regard), its all good now that everything is set up to be usable and I've disabled that unholy "Start Screen" from appearing on startup. Truly, the performance of the hardware itself makes Win8.1 feel otherwise fast and responsive, though the SSD-cached "hybrid" drive isn't anywhere near as quick as a full SSD; I'm not unhappy.
"This PC" however, seems to be a raging misnomer the likes of which even God has never seen as the very name itself denotes only locally attached storage, yet the concatenated list very clearly shows by "This PC" they *actually* mean, "Every Login to Each and Every Windows Machine on the Goddamn Network." I would have a shit hemorrhage if I fired this fucker up at work.
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There are a couple of things I've never had to buy. One is a cell phone, and the other is a laptop. Work provides them both. But here lately, I've been envisioning a laptop which could double as a secondary gaming platform.
I finally built a usable browserfarm by putting Win7 on a 32GB dual-XEON PowerEdge and remoting in via RDP - leaving my desktop free for multimedia and gaming, but all my spare parts are so old I could no longer cobble together a usable gaming box - I even had to spend real cash money dollars several weeks back on a couple of graphics cards for the kids to play their latest games and was unable to use their old cards for my own purposes.
I'd been using a laptop which my grandfather-in-law had upgraded, but it came equipped with a dismal Semperon for those of you who remember those; an Athlon (CPU) with no cache. So despite the SSD & 6GB of RAM my very soul ached every time I had to do something CPU intensive on it, and it certainly wasn't built with a GPU in mind. I do remember the first time a laptop outperformed a desktop in the gaming community. Even more shocking was by whom; it was the Dell XPS. Dude, its a Dell. I also remember the exorbitant price tag which accompanied such feats. Some things never change. I've been waiting to purchase the super sexy supermodel Razer Blade Pro (GREEN!BACKLIT), a gaming laptop with a $3000 price tag. Yes it's stupid expensive, but well worth the price of not being frustrated at everything, all the time. Especially given the amount of time spent in front of it.
There's a show I'm watching on Netflix with my son entitled Continuum with a great cast about a future where Corporations are the government, and the pros and (mostly) cons about such an arrangement. But at 1/3 the cost of the Razer, my own corporation led me the down the sadder-but-wiser-girl-for-me path and offered us the Chinese runner-up, Lenovo Y510p (RED!BACKLIT) with the same i7, twice the RAM (16GB), freaking SLi (dual-graphics) & a 24GB SSD-cached (hybrid) terabyte drive.
Despite the Windows 8.1 learning curve I anticipate being just as pleased with performance, because Asian runner-up supermodels are, after all, still supermodels. Exotic ones at that :)
Blocks of random, useless images on start screen
"Desktop Mode" doesn't contain required functionality
Had to "Search" for commands?
If I were on a desert island and had to chose between WindowsME and Windows8...
Wait...what?
Solid LeapFrog LeapPad replacement.
Corporate America is going to love this Playskool operating system!
Does it run Windows?
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Need one [1] socket 775 (Pentium 4) motherboard
I think the Intel motherboard is popping my power supplies - at this point it can't be anything else. I have an immediate need for an LGA [socket] 775 Pentium 4 motherboard. If you have one laying around unused, please let me know. 400W standard molex power supply a bonus, but not required.
For the price it would cost me to replace the mobo and the power supply, I'm nearly to a new barebones computer. So...if no one has one, anyone need a (OMGZ!) 3.6GHz (overclockable to 4.0GHz) Pentium 4 HyperThreaded processor?
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
glodowg's she gets first dibs.Thanks!
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My first PC was an HP Pavilion 7125. It was considered a "clone" because it wasn't made my IBM. 133MHz processor and 16MB of RAM. 1.62GB harddrive.
It cost me $3200.
A couple of years later I built my own computer one high-end part at a time over a period of six weeks. Damn thing was nearly obsolete by the time I finished it.
Most of my computers since then have been cobbled together from junk parts.
drax0r is a notorious early-adopter and had motherboards & CPUs literally strewn across the floor of his house. I would often wade through his useless discarded shit, and fashion entire systems from them. My longest-lasting computer was a "future-proof" system
drax0r and I build for our use at Wild Damn Texan six-years ago, and I'm still using that system today. In fact its 10,000 rpm "Raptor" is in my new box. More recently
glodowg deserves a place of honor in my heart for she unloads untold amounts of technology on me - none of which goes to waste. If I'm not propping up my own systems, I often find myself building systems for those who have none.
My newest computer is an 8MB cache 4 x 3.42GHz (Quad-Core) 64-bit AMD Phenom II X4 965 cooled by a large copper "heat-pipe" style heat sink and 6GB DDR2/667MHz memory in dual-channel mode (expandable to 8GB DDR2/1066) on an Asus motherboard with an "instant-on" web & chat enabled BIOS.
The primary drive is a 7200rpm 16MB cache 1TB drive with a 36GB 10k Raptor hosting VMware clients as well as the system's 9GB swap file and a 7200rpm 16MB cache 500GB iTunes volume. I was surprised to find that the 680W power supply included only a single SATA power connector, but hats off once again to
drax0r and glodowg. An Nvidia GT220 with 1GB memory provides graphics and all of this is stuffed into an aluminum Thermaltake "Tsunami Dream" case.My cost: $500.
But only because I reused existing RAM and harddrives. Yes
schpydurx, I know that DDR3 is faster. When you win the lottery, you can buy all the DDR3 you want.
Since this freed up my existing primary box(es), I ran out to Best Buy and picked up a power supply and built each of my children a new Win7 box, enabled Parental Controls, installed all of our games on them, and with enough cajoling, got
catttitude to play a couple of games with us! Historic. All four of us, playing Warcraft III and Jedi Outcast. The kids loved it.My wife bitching because I don't have four scroll-wheels mouses and she ended up on a box with a trackball...and my son fragging her everytime she respawned. My daughter apologizing to her mother for attacking her village, but her brother told her to because they were on the same team.
What more could I possibly ask for?
And now a word about the Windows Experience Index. The computer I just replaced got the same score. Why is that? Because its rated on the lowest sub-score. Forget that my CPU & memory are mere tenths from the highest possible score of 7.9 (Where's your DDR3 now, bitch?) but my new gaming card can't handle ALL THAT DESKTOP PERFORMANCE FOR WINDOWS AERO AWESOME.
I'm not even going to get into how *insane* that is, but I'll tell you why I don't care:
I still run my Desktop in "Classic" mode. With Aero turned off.
Win95 forever.
I do love me some Win7 though :P
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For reasons difficult to articulate, up to and including becoming frustrated by my 3GB memory limit, I've hereby decided to join the world of 64-bit computing:
I'm awaiting arrival of AMD's flagship processor, the 3.4GHz Quad-Core Phenom II X4 965 "Black Edition."
I was at one of those "Big Box" stores when I ran across a 64-bit e-Machine for under $400. I had no idea such a thing existed. Thankfully,
drax0r was there to talk me down. And its true - I didn't know what the processor nomenclature related to in consumer terms - I haven't owned an AMD chip since my K6-III/450 - their first (pre-Athalon) "Intel Killer" and you may have noticed in all that big, flashy, text on the boxes of bundled computers...they never reveal the speed.I'll be waiting.
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In one of those situations that those of you who know me know only happen to me, I managed to lose two power supplies in two different boxes, right about the same time. Because of the astronomical odds involved, while I deftly narrowed the problem down in one box almost immediately, the other took much, much longer.
And because one of the power supplies was my only SATA power, and because I have only one old molex-to-SATA converter and because my Raptor SATA drive is so freaking old it also contains "legacy" power and because I wanted to start utilizing the PowerMac and because my iTunes database was spread across three drives and because because because of the wonderful things he does...I spent an excruciating week culling down 2.5TB of data to fit onto a single 500GB drive for backup purposes and finally cobbled together an x86 box from remaining parts which is now, and likely temporarily, running Windows 7.
So
drax0r suggested I run Diablo II in an XP VM on a Win7 host. Yeah, that went about as well as can be expected. In his defense, it did install and run. There's a whole host of hokey shit that goes on with Win7, most of which is not related to my extremely old hardware. Some of which is. The good news? Win7 *actually* knows what SATA devices are and can read from them, and install to them. Its like...magic. Or linux. Anyway, my son is really digging it. After we run through this, I'll install the expansion pack. Once he has Diablo under his belt, I feel he'll be ready for Dungeon Siege. 10-years in the making: This is the reason I had a child.
And the SATA drive I put in the PowerMac and cloned wouldn't boot. And the application I downloaded to clone the drive and set it bootable in case I'd missed something didn't. And nothing makes me angrier than software which says, "I'm going to boot off your newly cloned drive now!" And then doesn't. Finder sees it. Disk Utility sees it. Startup Drive? Yeah, not so much. If I understood why a utility created for SETTING THE GODDAMN BOOT DRIVE of the machine wouldn't see the drive when everything else does, I'd be more mellow.
I found I was at my max accrued vacation (again) so was going to take some time off, but the 12-hour shift I worked to get everything done which needed doing so I wouldn't be missed pushed me to nearly 40 hours for the week when I factored in my sick time, for I was flat on my back all that next day with a debilitating cold, and most of the day after that. There's not much "downtime" when you're ill.
I often use "Restore Saved Draft" as a quick & dirty save function. However, that doesn't last indefinitely and I lost my rewrite of Chapter One of The Hobbit. Fortunately, I'd only finished about an eighth of it.
Oh, and I'm going to Massachusetts on a business trip the week of Halloween. Hope I don't miss
uniqueblog's DFW visit.And I quit both tobacco and Monster, simultaneously, a week ago.
A coworker (we'll call him 'Doc') loaned me the Definitive Gold Box Edition of Twin Peaks after overhearing me play Daniel Lichts "Escalation" for a Dexter fan at work (nestled between Twin Peaks and True Blood). After owning the soundtrack for 19-years, I finally got to see the damn thing - and let me tell you - it was well worth the wait. I say that because I can't even imagine what people were thinking when that aired in 1990. WHAT THE FUCK? Anyway - I'd always found the music beautiful and haunting - but coupled with that opening title sequence, the sap it injects just makes me laugh out loud now. I'll never hear it the same again.
I was surprised at how pervasive the score was in the first season, permeating every single scene as well as any incidental music that's being playing on the radio, the record player, or sung on stage. Quite impressive. God but the way they used that music in a Delirious meets Dynasty sort of way. I never could tell if they were being serious or not. GREAT acting.
So there it is. I've been embattled, and there's a weak weeks worth of worthless prattle. Each paragraph, individually, took way longer to live through in real life than seems possible by just reading it. I'm not used to such...errant diversity in my life. Carry on.
The 1TB 7200rpm 32MB-cache SATA drive.
$107 at Best Buy. Now if I could only get it out of compatibility mode. But because I installed it without AHCI enabled...In short, because I didn't F6 the drivers, there's no controller to apply drivers to.
So rather than wallow in self-pity (which I would do, trust me, if it would get me out of this cycle of Microsoft asininity) I'm going to, probably in this order, install:
- Windows 7 RC1
- Windows Server 2008
- Windows Server 2003
And in other most awesome news, I managed to procure an HP ProLiant DL380 G3 with dual-Xeon 3.20GHz procs and 4.5GB RAM. I unwrapped 2x72GB 10k Sun drives I've been saving for just such an adventure, swapped sleds, and created a 137GB (formatted) RAID-0 stripe to install ESXi on at work. Its ashame that VMware provides some of their tools for both linux and windows, some for linux only, and some for windows only? WTF ^^ mate?
Of course all this fun has been betwixt attempting to ignite an HP/UX frame in nPar mode on an external array. Bah!
I think I'll give away all my Sun servers. Anyone interested?
My XP box randomly drops USB ports. At first I thought this an issue with the operating system because I've had issued with XP and USB in the past, but here lately I've noticed that the new Intel board occasionally forgets it has PATA drives connected. Sometimes when I reboot (its boot drive is PATA) and sometimes while I'm using the computer.
Why not use SATA? I'm glad you asked! Mostly because even with a slipstreamed SP3, XP still doesn't have drivers for it. F6 drivers aside, it took me a week to find the right O/S driver on Intel's support page. The SATA optical drive? Sometimes it reads and burns, sometimes it doesn't. But I can't rely on the external DVD-burner because of the intermittent USB problem.
And because the Intel board only has one PATA port, I can't go all PATA either. Unless I use the Intel board for linux, which installs effortlessly and flawlessly - but because the Intel board limits me to 2.9 GB of RAM, I can't use an operating system which will allow me more.
This random dropping of ports also greatly limits my use of my new USB KVM, which gets confused. Frankly, I don't blame it. I'd get confused to! This completely disables my ability to bounce between two computers - the reason the KVM exists.
My KVM is not all that smart to begin with. Or rather, the engineers behind it. I suppose I'm some sort of anomaly, as the instructions layout how magnificent their KVM is, because it can do the following:
PC keyboard to control a PC
Mac keyboard to control a Mac
Sun keyboard to control a Sun
PC keyboard to control a Mac
PC keyboard to control a Sun
You guessed it, I'm using a MAC KEYBOARD TO CONTROL A PC. Am I the only person on the planet attempting to do this? Unlikely. No one else I know has the problems I do with IDE drives, SATA drivers, USB or KVM. I'd like to set someone on fire.
The solution is clear. Unfortunately, $8000 clear. That's the price of the box with the all-new 2.93GHz dual Quad-Core Intel Xeon "Nehalem" processors. Maybe at some point in my life all this extra-curricular activity I spend sleepless nights doing will someday pay off. I can't even imagine the things I could do with a shiny new MacPro - I'd be unstoppable! No more XP drivers, no more KVM, USB that *actually* worked. And screw those old 7200rpm drives. I'm ready for an external 15k rpm SAS array!
As it stands, I'm manually plugging my KVM into one box or another, depending on what I need to accomplish, as well as moving physical drives from one box to another, dependent upon my motherboard's mood. I needed access to my 500GB drive which was no longer seen, so I pulled my mac's boot drive out of its external enclosure, removed the drive from my XP box and plugged it in to the external firewire port.
Huh.
I was under the impression all this time that the 1394 IEEE port actually worked in XP. Color me unsurprised.
I'll likely tear down both computers again and create what I hope is my last & final configuration: Ubuntu 9.04 with VMWare Workstation.
Of course I'll need another 19" flat panel monitor...
- I have a new BFF at work, though he doesn't know it. No drax0r, you haven't been replaced. He would make a poor eating partner, and he doesn't talk much. In fact, he doesn't say much at all. Probably why I like him.
- I rickrolled myself. I was rooting around my server looking for wallpaper to burn on CD for my new BFF and pulled up my own spoof. At work. Its been many years since I've had such an instantaneous spike in adrenaline.
- I was hot yesterday, so I went to the barber shop to have my head scalped with a 1-guard. "Sports Clips" where I had to talk to some girl about how she not only knows nothing about computers, she also can't even navigate MySpace. Remind me next time to tell people that I sweep streets for a living. Either that, or let's open an "IT Clips" where we don't have to sit around and be asked about sports.
My newly shorn head was the buzz of conversation at work today (pathetic, I know) where, in that special way I seem to have with people, that being, completely believable by affably and almost unwittingly giving things away,
drax0r came up in conversation (as he used to shave his head and face more severely than myself) and now one of the DBA's *really believes* that he walks around his house in sackcloth, like Uncle Fester.
I bought a Rastafarian knit cap at a head shop this weekend and wore it to work Monday. Other than the strange looks this white boy got, my hair was so long they kinda looked like dreads spilling out of that cap. I'm not going say that wasn't another reason I got my hair cut. - Sometimes I'm so brilliant I amaze myself. But I usually temper that with the fact that if I were as brilliant as I thought I was, why does it take me so long to realize these brilliant solutions? Just like you, I put my pants on one leg at a time. When I wear them. Anyway - its no secret that I despise running XP, and only do so in a virtual machine. Hardware limitations prevent me from running multiple VM's on my laptop efficiently, so I usually just don't run the one with XP. Problem is, while I'm afforded quite a bit of autonomy at work, occasionally I get called on not being 'online' that is to say, accessible via the corporate SameTime instant messenger client (imagine that, an unavailable sysadmin) or timely in my responses to Lotus Notes email (I've said for years Lotus Notes, IE & Photoshop is the only reason I still run Windows). So today, an amazing solution came to me - put my vmware XP instance on the corporate SAN! VNC costs my laptop almost nothing, and I can keep it up and running 24x7. They're happy, I'm happy. Freaking brilliant!
Recent updates to both my XP box and my OSX box have crippled my functionality identically, though it affects me much, much more on Windows. When I reboot either of these operating systems, my computer now cannot traverse the KVM and get a read on my widescreen monitor, so it defaults to a lower resolution and a 4:3 setting, which given my 16:10 aspect ratio, renders illegible ass. I set both the computers to fixed 1440:900, but of course this new update assumes I don't know what the fuck I want, and overrides me. I guess that's what frustrates me the most. How about an update where you can uncheck 'idiot' mode? And though this is an issue on both computers, I really only ever have to reboot the XP box with any regularity, which compounds the problem. At each reboot I must detach the monitor from the KVM and plug it into the back of my machine to let the video card get a reading directly from the monitor itself. I downloaded the exact widescreen driver from the monitor manufacture and forced its use at boot. The computer didn't care, and defaulted back. I forced the change by using the video card manufacture's advanced settings to set the resolution - which it did by allowing the display area to exceed the screen area! I changed the registry to force my resolution, but with every change I make, it creates new registry entries for me, because it thinks its smarter than I am.
I hate computers.
I want to travel back in time to hunt dinosaurs and get startled off the pre-fab trail by a charging T-Rex causing me to step on a butterfly and when we get back to our time there will be no Microsoft and the leader dude will put a gun to my head because he'll have to use an operating system that doesn't suck.
I only managed three hours of sleep last night.
When I'm not over-engineering complex solutions to rather simple problems, I sometimes fall prey to them. Yesterday I download an *.exe file and thought to myself, "I bet that's a virus." But because I work for a technologies company who provides us very robust tools, I laugh a viruses, mostly because I don't use Windows. That day, however, I was on my XP box. Not to worry, I scanned the file and it came back with a clean bill of health. Unfortunately, the moment I double-clicked it, well...let's just say my virus software finally became aware of the problem. It dawned on me that my company doesn't give us the best anti-virus solution, rather, the most cost-effective. Fortunately, I also run Spybot's registry resident, which blocks all changes to my registry. Unfortunately, the virus in question persistently probed the operating system for access, resulting in thousands of popups, two every half-second. Growing tired of this game, I finally selected, "remember this decision" and chose 'block.' At least, I thought I did. For whatever reason, the resident doesn't fully draw its buttons, so I actually ended up choosing, 'allow' at which point Spybot notified me one last time of my choice, and the virus shut down my computer.
I booted into linux and ran f-prot on the windows partition, deleting several of the executables:
sudo ./f-prot -a
[Found security risk] {W32/Backdoor.BVZK (exact)} /media/sda1/bndafai.exe
Disinfect (Y/N/A/Q) ? Y
Yes
[Warning] {Error closing file: Success} /media/sda1/bndafai.exe
[Deleted] /media/sda1/bndafai.exe
But it was all downhill from there. Despite my dizzying array of malware-hunters I was unable to locate the trojans which infected me, and reinstalled. Yes, I was up all night. Fortunately, separate volumes house all my data, so I only had to blow away the OS disc. And while this was a tremendous pain in the ass, re-installing my apps was quick and painless and as an added bonus, my 4-year old computer again runs like a scalded ape. And to think I was considering a new computer. The only thing I have left to do is reinstall the liunx boot-block.
And I received the new iPods yesterday! While I was importing my iTunes data into the new installation I paid particular attention to cover art, and had a discussions with
stuf123 who's going to draw album art for the new Indiana Jones Soundtracks Collection for us! Interestingly, the Nano cannot sync video podcasts - the number one reason why my wife wanted them. I'm still baffled by this discovery, but the apple support forums are already ablaze with accusations, so I think I'll sit this one out and wait for the firmware upgrade. The first thing I put on my iPod was Excelsior! followed by Indiana Jones.
Thanks babe!
The only break I took during last nights activities was to play a game of three-way 'War' with my kids using a deck of Star WarsRebel and Imperial cards shuffled together.
I lost.
And finally, that meme going around - I saw it first at
wyldemusick:
If you saw ME in a police car, what would you think I had been arrested for?
