Vista

My 6-year-old son has this digital camera that we got him when he was 5. He wasn't that into it, but recently has shown interest. It's a disney Pix "toy" camera that comes with specialized software from digitalblue that you need to install if you want to get the pictures off. When I first got the camera, I just plugged the camera's USB cable into my XP machine to see if it would come up in the file system. No luck, I had to install the software, then it worked.



After "upgrading" to vista, it no longer worked even after uninstalling/reinstalling the drivers. This morning, he asked me to get pictures off the camera. I told him it wasn't likely because of the new computer. I was shocked when I plugged the USB cable into my Lenovo Y410 fedora 8 machine and a dialog box popped up asking me if I wanted to import pictures!

Freaking awesome! Cheers to the Fedora community!

Apparently SP1 for Vista has been made public, but if you've got Intel's 945G Express series chipset or Realtek for audio, better be careful and read this article on InfomationWeek first.

I have no firsthand knowledge of the problems since I switched to fedora 8 a couple months ago and I definitely won't be applying SP1 to my vbox vista install till some better news is out.

I have to admit that over the past couple of weeks transitioning to linux as my primary OS more than once I though to myself that for sure I'd be back on windows soon. I've been admining/using redhat distros since 1995, but always in a server environment. But as I get more and more comfortable with my configuration, I'm looking back less and less. At this point nearly everything is working with 2 exceptions:
1.) when plugging headphones in, sound still comes out the speakers
2.) I have been unable to get the PCCard reader to work (the machine does play well with MMC, MS, MSPro, SD, SDPro and xD cards, however.)

I have also found the following bits to be useful: While getting the webcam to work is outlined below, I found that most apps out there still would not work with the webcam. This is because most of the apps like camstream and gyachi work with Video4Linux and I needed to to use V4L2 with the built in webcam. The solution for this is to roll with Kopete for web camming and IMing. Works great!

I also had some issues getting an external VGA monitors set up and working correctly with spanning desktops. It wouldn't be quite so complicated if I didn't have different screen resolutions between my home monitor and work monitor. Basically, one needs to add some information to the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file that specifies you would like a virtual desktop. The video section in my config file looks like this:

Section "Device"
Identifier "Videocard0"
Driver "intel"
Option "monitor-lvds" "lvds"
Option "monitor-vga" "vga"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "lvds"
Option "LeftOf" "vga"
VendorName "Monitor Vendor"
ModelName "LCD Panel 1680x1050"
HorizSync 31.5 - 65.5
VertRefresh 56.0 - 65.0
Option "dpms"
EndSection


Section "Monitor"
Identifier "vga"
Option "RightOf" "lvds"
VendorName "Monitor Vendor"
ModelName "LCD Panel 1680x1050"
HorizSync 31.5 - 65.5
VertRefresh 56.0 - 65.0
Option "dpms"
EndSection


Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Videocard0"
Monitor "lvds"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 24
Virtual 2880 900
EndSubSection
EndSection


With this configuration, I can now use the xandr command to set up the different monitors. when leaving work I turn off the VGA by calling xrandr --output VGA --off from a quick launch icon, then when I plug in at home i do the same using xrandr --output VGA --auto --right-of LVDS and everything's great.

There is also a KDE applet called KRandRTray that will let you dynamically change screen resolutions.

Finally, because we use Office 2k7 native formats in the office because of the enhanced features I had to figure out what to do. Wine wasn't going to cut it, though I did get Fireworks and textpad running under wine. So I installed VirtualBox, created a VM and gave it 1.5 GB RAM (The box has 3GB) and 32MB Video memory. I was able to cleanly install Vista Home Premium from the recovery CD that came with the machine with no problems whatsoever. I spun up the virtual PC, installed the VirtBox client extensions along with OfficeUlimate 2k7 and TurboTax and Quicken. Everything works flawlessly!

After Using Vista as my primary OS for just over a year I can say without a doubt that it has hindered my productivity and caused more heartache that any other OS I've ever used. I am running the 32-bit version of Vista Ultimate on a gateway laptop with Turion64 Processor and 2.5 gigs of RAM. The Vista I'm working with is the result of and upgrade install from XP Media Center 2005, which may be part of the problem, and it was probably stupid to do the upgrade rather than a clean install, but I was lazy and didn't want to have to reinstall all my progs.

I am going to enumerate all the problems:

• Slower launching all programs


• Initially, I could no longer use a cisco VPN client because their vista-compatible client was not vista upgrade compatible


• Now can use the cisco vpn client, but when it's installed on the system it breaks my wireless so I have to uninstall it after I use it to get wireless working


• Have to run many progs as admin for them to function - packet sniffers, SQL Server Manager, lots...


• Annoying UAC pop ups require more clicks to get things done (ended up disabling User Account Control)


• Cannot move files > 3GB to local machine over the network.... WTF?!?


• Moving files over the network is much slower than xp/linux/macOS (even after turning off Vista -TCP Auto Tuning)


• All MS product short cuts in quick launch and recent programs on the start menu stopped working


• My volume control mixer in the status bar area periodically disappears


• Intermittent crashes of windows explorer at least one or two times a week


• Outlook often hangs/crashes even with all mailbox maintenance performed


• TortoiseSVN status cache crashes daily


• Windows gets my monitors confused when switching between my home and work configuration about 50% of the time


• Acrobat reader 7 posts application warning before starting regarding compatibility issues

The list could probably go on, but just those issues have made me want to move on. So yesterday I bought a Lenovo 3000 Y410 dual core 2G RAM laptop (which will come loaded with Vista Home Premium) and a 250GB laptop sata drive both on fire sale from compusa. I will be pulling the OEM drive, dropping in the 250GB drive and loading up Fedora 8. This will become my primary work computer, and I'm going to see if I can get away with not running windows at all, but I think I'm probably going to have to run XP under VMware because we use a lot of features from Office 2007 and I do use Visual Studio to create dtsx packages pretty often. Then there's Mapforce and Motorola phone tools and probably a bunch of other stuff. Oh and I'll have to somehow get 10 years worth of emails into mbox format somehow. That'll be ugly.

Well, I've almost talked myself out of it - maybe SP1 will solve all my problems. Ohh the pain.

So my wifes XP gateway laptop set to run automatic updates received one last week, then blue screened. Then wouldn't boot.

So, I figure the drive has got some problems, let's pull the drive and hook it up to an external IDE > USB to get some data off of it and try and run chkdsk on it from another machine. Pull drive, hook up adapter, plug into USB port and..... what? No daa-dink sound!!? No "installing new hardware" message???! green light is on the adapter - check drive is spinning - uhh, nope. This is truly an Oh FUCK! moment as all my wife's business data is (was) on that drive. I stuck it back in the laptop.


We went to Office Depot and bought a new HP laptop. Thankfully, it booted up. I installed office and all the other programs she needs to run her business and the machine ran fine all day. That evening I instructed the machine to download and install all windows updates. Next morning the machine was in chkdsk mode stuck at 1%. Hard cycled the machine and skipped chkdsk. It turns out it got it's hard drive stuck in a cycle where the dirty bit was set on the C: drive and every time the machine booted up it wanted to run chkdsk. Semi-normal, except that chkdsk would start and never get past 1%. Well, I thought, "That's sketchy, let's get a backup of your data." Apparently windows backup will not run if the dirty bit is set. Did you know that? I sure didn't. Returned the unit for an exchange and reinstalled all software, etc. So far new unit works.

So now the gateway part: the machine is still under warranty, so I call up explain the problem and they brilliantly deduct that the hard drive has failed (yeah, thanks). And volunteer to send out another. I inquire as to what will be on that hard drive and they respond that it will come with XP on the C: partition and the gateway recovery crap on the d: partition just like the original drive.

So off I send the failed drive to a data recovery center, really assuming it would be on the simple side for pros like them to get the data off the disks - after all, there was physical damage to the drive and it never jammed and made those clicking noises, it just stopped spinning up. Of course 4 days later I get this update:

"The current status from the lab is that we are attempting to replace the damage parts inside the hard drive. This is expected to require a higher level clean-room recovery and if we continue, it looks like it will be on the mid-upper range of the recovery ($1600-$2100)"

Then 2 days after that:

"The report from the lab is that they are still having trouble getting the drive to respond with standard recovery procedures and are expecting to move the drive onto another piece of equipment for higher level recoveries. We should have some more news within a few days."


Sweet. Meanwhile, this morning the hard drive from gateway shows up. I shove it into the laptop, happily expecting a fresh system. WTF?!!? The computer does not boot. The computer does not even realize there's a hard drive attached to it. First thought was they sent me a faulty drive. Second thought was, they sent me an empty drive! Emtpy as in not even initialized Empty. Pulling the drive and attaching it to the usb adapter proved this theory to be right. So using vista disk management tools I have initialized the disk, performed a quick format, and am currently running a deep scan (chkdsk /r /f k:) Just make sure the sectors/clusters are all good.

When that's done I'll be putting Fedora 7 on the laptop. What the hell are thinking? Here's what the enclosed note said about the drive:

"Please find enclosed the replacement part that you requested along with easy to read installation instructions."


A. There were no instructions.
B. No regular consumer would know how to deal with a disk that wasn't even initialized.
C. I suspect that if I were to call, they would send out another harddrive and I would be stuck in an infinite loop with gateway support.

So Linux it is. I guess some weeks are just bad computer weeks, and during those weeks, its good to be able to let your geek flag fly!

Peace.

Virtual Clone Drive from SlySoft.com is a great utility that allows you to mount .iso files directly as virtual drives. I like it and use it a lot. But, today I was bringing up a new vista developer workstation and got vista, SQL Server, Visual Studio, updates, and patches all installed. I was logged in under my account and Clone Drive worked great. When I rebooted and logged in under the developer (also an admin) account, i went to mount an .iso image by right clicking on it. Well, the Clone drive mount option was not available. So I reinstalled Virtual Clone Drive, but when I did, the machine Blue Screened. I restarted, it blue screened, i restarted into safe mode, it blue screened. I was not happy.

However, by booting up with the install dvd for vista and selecting the option to repair, the machine was able to revert to a restore point just before the 2nd VCD install, but after the Updates installed, so all was good again.

Moral - don't install VCD twice!