Recent Posts

1926

General Software Discussion / Re: WINDOWS 7 THREAD (ongoing)

« Last post by Edvard on January 30, 2009, 01:03 PM »

Just so I can play with a Windows beta? 
Aw, you guys are too much...

Being a Linux guy, I'm actually wondering why I'm going through all the trouble.
Then, in a fit of lucidity I realize that Windows still rules in most of the world and I'm going to have to teach my son the ways of it. *sigh*

Besides that, I hear Win7 is shaping up to be a pretty nice little product.
Curiosity and cats and all that...

1927

General Software Discussion / Re: WINDOWS 7 THREAD (ongoing)

« Last post by Edvard on January 30, 2009, 11:55 AM »

If it isn't a daft question why use vLite on a beta installation of Windows 7? If you are installing to an empty partition why not just use the proper installer - there will probably be enough issues because it is a beta version without adding vLite into the mix?

-Carol Haynes (January 30, 2009, 11:04 AM)

Not a daft question at all... I suppose I haven't revealed all the details:

1- I have no way to burn the ISO to a DVD. The only suitable media I have is a 4 Gig USB stick.
2- The Win7 ISO is 4.6 Gigabytes... 600 Megabytes too large for the USB media.
3- My target box has no DVD player nor does it have capability to boot from USB media. I didn't care until now.
4- My target box is a 1GHz Celeron with 512 Mb RAM. Any resources I can shave off by using vLite can only help, and I'm not entirely sure I would be successful even with a proper installation DVD.

So, all my canoodling is simply a sorry attempt to deal with the physical limitations of my particular set of resources.
 

1928

General Software Discussion / Re: WINDOWS 7 THREAD (ongoing)

« Last post by Edvard on January 30, 2009, 10:23 AM »

In that case copy the contents of the whole ISO into a folder in your existing partition and then look in AutoRun.INF to find out which file is launched from the DVD when it is inserted and double click that - it should allow you launch the installer from Windows and then make sure you choose a fresh install in a new partition.

-Carol Haynes (January 30, 2009, 05:25 AM)

EXACTLY what I intended to do. Unfortunately, I discovered there is no AutoRun.inf or Setup.exe on my vLite'd ISO, so I'm going to try to copy them over and try again tonight.

1929

Living Room / Re: Cleaning Inside the Case

« Last post by Edvard on January 30, 2009, 10:15 AM »

I clean my case regularly - every 6 months or so. My house is an older model and it tends to create dust spontaneously. So I unplug my box and let it cool down for about a half hour, then I lean it up against a fence outside and fire up the electric leaf blower!!

Dust-free in seconds and I've never fried any hardware

As for your original request, have you looked at any of the computer gadget websites?
Try the Metro DataVac line: http://www.metrovacw...=computer&page=1
or this USB powered model: http://www.slipperyb.../usb-vacuum-cleaner/

1930

General Software Discussion / Re: WINDOWS 7 THREAD (ongoing)

« Last post by Edvard on January 29, 2009, 08:55 PM »

@Carol: No DVD reader at home and no DVD burner at work.
I do have a 4 gig USB stick, but no capability to boot it via BIOS on my box at home, hence my troubles.

@zridling: Carol is right, when I mount the Win7 ISO, it pops up the installer. Apparently, while you can't upgrade to Win7, you can install it to another disk or partition from a running Windows.

1931

General Software Discussion / Re: WINDOWS 7 THREAD (ongoing)

« Last post by Edvard on January 29, 2009, 08:10 PM »

With XP, you copy the 'i386' folder and run 'winnt.exe' from there, because "setup.exe cannot be run in DOS mode".
I expect I will find a similar trap waiting for me with Win7 because there is no winnt.exe to fall back to.
The Win7 installer apparently can run from an already-running XP or Vista (doesn't need it's own boot environment) so maybe I can run setup.exe from Wine?

@40hz:

The Grub configuration script (bless it's pointy little head) identifies Win7's loader just fine and installs to the MBR without incident.

Does that mean a generic

[Select]

title Windows 7
rootnoverify (hd1,0)
chainloader +1

entry in Grub does the trick?

1932

General Software Discussion / Re: WINDOWS 7 THREAD (ongoing)

« Last post by Edvard on January 29, 2009, 07:42 PM »

I'm still struggling with how to get this on my box. Right now I'm thinking the old-school way we used to install Win98, only I'll be doing the copying from a Linux...
Right now, I have downloaded everything on my computer at work. I've made a 'Slim' distro with vLite and have the files packed into an ISO, which is mounted as a drive so I have access to the files.

1-Copy all files from the mounted ISO to a USB stick.
2-At home, copy those files to a free NT partitioned disk, in a folder labeled "Win7".
3-Boot to a DOS prompt via floppy.
4-Run "C:\win7\setup.exe"

Think it'll work? 
The only thing I'm wondering is if the DOS prompt will be able to run the setup program, considering the 16 vs. 32 bit barrier.

Oh well, here goes nothing...

1933

Living Room / Re: Going Into Frugality Mode -- What are your Tricks and Tips

« Last post by Edvard on January 26, 2009, 07:35 PM »

I'm probably preaching to the choir round here but...

If you're a meat eater, drop it from your diet.
Meat's expensive, vegetables aren't nor are (some) alternative sources of protein.

-cranioscopical (January 26, 2009, 06:50 PM)

I don't know where you are, but up here in the Great Northwest, vegetables are a spendy proposition for daily consumption. I know, because my wife recently had her gall bladder removed and complications from it are turning her to a fresh vegetable and juice diet. Not cheap.
Now to be fair, meat is expensive, but I never understood how come the warmed-over goo they so graciously pre-package for you is pennies by comparison.

So... eat Ramen, Mac & Cheese, bread from the "day old" shelf and you'll probably save a bunch.
And for the love of your pocketbook, don't eat at restaurants. 

1934

Living Room / Re: Monster.com and USAJobs security breach

« Last post by Edvard on January 26, 2009, 05:35 PM »

Just when I was getting desperate enough to apply for a gov'mint job... 

1935

General Software Discussion / Re: wanted: a fix for ubuntu problem/new linux distro

« Last post by Edvard on January 26, 2009, 11:39 AM »

I just thought of something.
I'm using a Memorex cd-rw disc, that wouldn't have anything to do with corrupt installs would it?

-nite_monkey (January 25, 2009, 03:44 PM)

I have had mixed luck with CD-RW burns. Sometimes it's fine, sometimes not. Most often it's not, so I would recommend getting a proper CD-R.
I would also second 40hz's advice as I have seen that same thing happen to others across many forums and a slower burn fixed it right up.

@Paul Keith: On more than one occasion, I have found solutions to obscure problems on the Gentoo wiki and nowhere else.

1936

Living Room / Re: How to make an external HD SHUT UP?!?!

« Last post by Edvard on January 26, 2009, 11:28 AM »

Put it on top of a suitable vibration-dampening material, like a square of thick pile carpeting or a large Ziploc baggie full of some sort of gelatinous material. Double-bagged to guard against leakage, of course.
Or you could suspend it from a shelf with large rubber bands or springs (an old audiophile trick for isolating turntables).

1937

Living Room / Re: puzzled by applications that pop up on the taskbar but do not produce a window

« Last post by Edvard on January 26, 2009, 10:41 AM »

I've had instances where an application didn't want to show up. "Minimize" and "Maximize" was the only things that worked.

Autohotkey to the rescue!
After I minimized the app, I would right-click the app in the taskbar and select "Restore".
Then make a .ahk script (Ooh, what I wouldn't give for a AHK command shell):

[Select]

WinMove,[insert taskbar text here],,0,0

POW! Window in the top-left corner!

jgpaiva's Gridmove would probably work as well.

1938

Living Room / Re: Gadgets that make you look like a jerk

« Last post by Edvard on January 23, 2009, 09:38 AM »

Bluetooth Headset: 

Cool if: It's a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away and you refer to your boss as "Lord Vader" as you're giving him the red carpet tour around the fully operational battle station.
Not cool if: It's not.
 

1939

General Software Discussion / IronAHK - .NET and Mono port of AutoHotkey

« Last post by Edvard on January 21, 2009, 02:34 PM »

Do you know what this means!?!?!

AUTOHOTKEY FOR LINUX AND MAC!!!11!!one!1elevn!!1!

IronAHK is a rewrite of AutoHotkey for .NET and Mono to provide cross-platform compatibility, increased performance and smaller binary file sizes for compiled scripts.

Announcement here: http://www.autohotke...orum/topic34421.html
Code here: http://code.google.com/p/ironahk/
Future website here: http://www.ironahk.net/

Currently there's no binaries and a fair bit of work that needs to be done, but if you're brave you can pull the code from svn and check it out.
from teh intarwebz

1940

Living Room / Re: TV via broadband ?

« Last post by Edvard on January 20, 2009, 08:42 PM »

Here's a few I found on a PMOG mission:
http://www.ovguide.com/movies-tv.html
http://www.tv-links.cc/
http://www.indymogul.com/episodes
http://www.hulu.com/

Have fun!!

1941

General Software Discussion / Re: software for removing greenscreen/inserting any background

« Last post by Edvard on January 20, 2009, 10:57 AM »

This should be scriptable with ImageMagick.
Any idea what color definition the green screen is?

1942

Living Room / Re: Switching to Linux for a week

« Last post by Edvard on January 20, 2009, 10:30 AM »

I have been following HaikuOS off-and-on since BeOS was sold to Palm (I even signed the petition to open the BeOS source code), and so far only unstable testing images are available for it.
ReactOS has never been out of Alpha, despite 8 years of development.
I may be a maverick when the mood strikes me, but not that much.

However, I think I will give them a whirl just cause you asked... 

1943

Living Room / Re: Switching to Linux for a week

« Last post by Edvard on January 19, 2009, 06:12 PM »

Dude, you ain't seen the half...



P.S. - I have since added Plan 9 and Mac OS9 to that list

1944

Living Room / Re: Switching to Linux for a week

« Last post by Edvard on January 19, 2009, 04:16 PM »

Thanks for the tip, Paul. I'm currently downloading Sidux as well as Debian Lenny as I've seen quite a few good reports about it.
I'll install it and see if it whups some pants on Xubuntu... er, that is after I get around to giving OpenSolaris a go... 

from Paul's link...

Sidux is for newbies who want to feel tough, Sid is for competent people.

Oh dear, identity crisis in 5... 4... 3... 

1945

Living Room / Re: Switching to Linux for a week

« Last post by Edvard on January 19, 2009, 11:23 AM »

Ubuntu is sometimes not the best for trying out Linux because it hides stuff rather than introduce stuff to Linux.

-Paul Keith (January 17, 2009, 08:45 AM)

I'm seeing this more and more... I've got Ubuntu on all the computers in our house because it keeps the wife happy but I noticed more and more stuff is 'hands-off' automated. Okay, I understand that modern computing requires on-the-fly actions like mounting usb drives, acquiring WiFi connections, mounting network drives,etc.
BUT...
When NetworkManager has a memory leak (yeah, they updated it but my box lags after about 4 hours and fully craps it after ~18 hours), I can't tell if X is actually loading the drivers I specified, and the network drive connector plays dumb about NFS exports, it starts getting a little much.

I'm seriously thinking about going to Debian as I am much more used to the 'old' Linux way of doing things but have gotten addicted to the simplicity of apt-get.

1946

Living Room / Re: Snake Wrangling for Kids: Learning to Program with Python

« Last post by Edvard on January 19, 2009, 11:04 AM »

I bought a copy of Computer Programming Is Fun for my son and it's been quite useful.
Good to see a free option, nice find!
 

1947

Living Room / Can a Linux man survive in Windows Land?

« Last post by Edvard on January 16, 2009, 05:26 PM »

According to a TechNewsWorld post, around the same time that Ash Pringle dove into Linux for a week, Kevin dean at Monochrome Mentality was doing the opposite:

I'm going to give Windows Server 2008 a spin on my personal computer for the next week or so, full time.
...
So, in the next week or so, I'll be trying to use my computer and relearn a whole new way of doing things. Just as new Linux users balk at the changes, I'm sure I will, and in the process I hope to learn a little bit more about what I use my computer for, what I depend on and what flexibilities I have.

The Beginning
The Windows Seat - Day 0: BIOS
The Windows Seat - Day 0: Virtualization and Bitness
The Windows Seat - Day 1: Shutdown
The Windows Seat - Day 3: Interfaces

A little less reading, and a little less entertaining, but informative nonetheless.
The last one was posted on Jan. 2 so I'm hoping there will be more forthcoming...

How the hell I got to this from Fox News, I'll never know... and WTH was I doing at Fox News??

1948

Living Room / Re: 7.7.7.0 Browser Hijack Virus

« Last post by Edvard on January 15, 2009, 07:33 PM »

OK, some instructions for removing this thing have been posted at http://www.myantispy...e-trojan-dnschanger/

The best thing is to NOT get infected in the first place, but if you do, there's some sound advice.

I've also seen a lot of reports that it prevents Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware program from running. I'd say that's as good as an advertisement of MBAM's effectiveness in removing malware.
Apparently it is freeware as a scanning tool but a paid registration gives you "Realtime Protection".
Has anybody had any experience with this tool?

@Nod5: Here is the MD5 for the "bad" wdmaud.sys.
63453ec7d65a333a0a645cc50195990a

Also, the bad one is only about 17K where the real one is 74 or 82k

1949

General Software Discussion / Re: windows 7 beta available for free Jan 9 (!)

« Last post by Edvard on January 15, 2009, 05:32 PM »

I would (I have a 4G usb stick I can spare) but my box doesn't boot the usb. I've looked around for ways to make Grub boot the usb port and floppy-based usb booters, but nothing has worked so far.

1950

Living Room / Re: 7.7.7.0 Browser Hijack Virus

« Last post by Edvard on January 15, 2009, 01:39 PM »

The ones in C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\ are fine. It's always if they are found in the c:\WINDOWS or system32.
If your registry says wdmaud.drv it should be fine as well.