Monthly Archives: August 2007

It’s broken.

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Installed XP into a partition. Created 2 more partitions on the same drive.
All looked good.
Powered down. Changed USB card, cleaned inside
Powered up.
And the main drive – the boot drive – has gone. Completely gone.

XP boots. I see the Owner logon. Click Ok. Full blue screen. Then the Windows login music, then the logout music then it gets back to the Owner logon.

If I get in using recovery I see the C: drive – which is the second drive. I can’t move out of that HD.
The BIOS sees two drives.

Open machine up. There are 2 HD’s. Of the cables going in/out there are a set identical but for 1 orange cable. Master? Switch and power up. Nothing, same as above happens.

I can’t reinstall Windows onto the second drive – the only one it sees – as that is my archive drive – and even if I could where did the first one go?

I have no idea where Windows thinks it has gone or how to convince it that it has returned.

Edit: Windows loads to a point then stops. So it must be loading that from the original HD. It then uses that information and part of that must be that the drive it looks at does not exist. So that’s a registry error? But how to get there?
The one drive it seems is not both as 1 large drive. There is no /windows folder.
The only option I have – so far – is to install into the HD it does see. Then boot from that and fix things later. And that risks data loss which isn’t crucial but would be annoying. Still, time for work…

Edit2: The main HD is the bottom one. I remove the connector (has 4 coloured wires going into it) from the top drive. Use a system rescue cd and it sees that disc. It sees the partitions I created. I tell it to make the * partition to a Primary. It says to reboot, I do. And still Windows (booting from the XP CD) says there is no HD. But there is.

Edit3: The BIOS sees no drives. The IDE Config screen has:
OnBoard SATA Controller: Auto
SATA Operation Mode: RAID
OnBoard SATAII Controller: Auto
SATAII Operation Mode: SATA
SATAII Driving: Normal
The CD and DVD drives are listed. Nothing else is detected.
Cables are all good, nothing undo, nothing lose.
I’m running out of variables here……..

Edit4: It’s dead. Nothing I do, nothing default values do and no amount of cable checking gets any life to either drive.

So……. proper recovery time. Go buy an external SATA case, plug in the drive with the archived material on. Then further think about what I can do next.

Edit5:
Systemrescue CD sees both drives. It has made the first partition a primary which I wanted.
ctrl-a enters the RAID setup. It lists both drives correctly.
The Setup menus from pressing F2 show NO drives. No matter what, no drives.
So it’s not a Windows error.
I have removed closed pins 2-3 on the jumpers next to the cmos battery. That reset the internal clock so it worked.
So why doesn’t it work?
(This is not frustration now, hasn’t been for a while. It’s a puzzle. A damn hard one too)

Edit6: (at 2am)
It’s not jumpers.
I removed the USB card.
I checked seating of everything, I’ve googled error 0075 and nothing applies. And it doesn’t apply because all was good. And it doesn’t apply because the cd can see them.

How about I post photos and someone take a look? :)

Not my OS day

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New XP install
Sata drives
It wants the drivers off a floppy
I have no floppy
The only machine that can write floppies is this one
So it doesn’t see the drives. At all.
So right now I haven’t a clue what to do.

It’s stupid that Windows cannot deal, and it’s stupid I can’t just yank something from the motherboard.

……… Enable sata, Disable raid.

Today is still not my day. If I could I’d go back to bed.

Mac keys do not work.

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Cmd+v will not work.
Cmd+any other key is fine

Shift+r will not work
Shift+any other key is fine

v+Cmd will work but – obviously – throws a v at the start and it’s not meant to work like that anyway.
r+ShiftShiftShiftShift might work.

Mac forums are without a clue
restarting – a daily event here now with the ‘oh so stable’ mac does not work
running onyx does not work

It’s an apple keyboard
I dismantled the (stupidly assembled) thing and cleaned it fully a couple of weeks ago. It is NOT the reason.

So, why has the wondrous OS X decided to start crumbling even further? Any ideas?

Can Ubuntu be installed on a mac mini? If it can, I may well. (Yes it can. Dual boot? No. I have no loyalty to OS X. It’ll be the whole HD).

Update: What appears to happen – because I had this happen before – is that OS X forgets just what language settings are in use. So curing it involved choosing another language in the International prefs, then choosing the proper one again. When it happened before I posted to the apple forums I followed up within the hour to say it was working again. No-one replied that it was a known issue. Which means it isn’t, it doesn’t happen and I have a lemon?
Apart from Parallels, ubuntu is looking good……

Another reinstall.

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J’s laptop went off with a broken screen. It came back with a new one. And a heap of software install issues. HP admitted that if I sent it back all they would do is format the drive and replace the OS. So that’s what I’ll be doing tomorrow. It’s about this time tomorrow dban will complete for my machine. Not so bad – I have the weekend to play some games.

And for those that follow it, isn’t the trolling on rab great right now? Though I have a feeling it’s a regular behind it…

Social Workers. Still useless.

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Social Workers. Pointless

The Facebook default for an image is just so appropriate.

(and do I care that I’m using a blanket term? No. Why? Well if they won’t put their own house in order they can all live in it together. Do I care if no-one else joins? No – it’s still somewhere for me to vent. And do I care if they hold it against me? I didn’t get to this point of view without reason did I?)

Union nonsense

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Employees should have access to social networking websites such as Facebook during office hours, the TUC has said.

Some firms have blocked workers’ access to the sites, or disciplined staff for misuse of the internet.

However, the union organisation says it is unreasonable to try to stop staff from having a life outside work and suggests setting guidelines instead. BBC.
(My emphasis)

Since when do they get confused with “office hours” and “outside work” ?

Unreasonable? Get a grip.

Update: Just found this on The Register:

An old Vulture writes: There is no doubt the TUC’s groundbreaking dictat on social networking sites will help the UK’s union movement shake off its unwarranted and erroneous “dinosaur” image and contribute to the revival of the UK’s heavy industrial base. If only Arthur Scargill, Red Robbo, Joe Gormley and their cohorts had had access to Bebo and Friends Reunited we’d still be enjoying the three day week, driving British Leyland cars and singing along to Billy Bragg in the dark

(Maybe you need to be a bit older to appreciate this…..)

Slow and secure

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For reasons that escape me I am securely wiping my PC’s HD.
I went to reinstall XP (over a year in situ and I’ll be doing OS X next – less than a year…) and figured that rather than just let it overwrite, I’d get everything smooth and clean. I could have formatted but that doesn’t really do the job, it just plays a system trick – after all, that’s how the police et al get their info isn’t it? So I got dban – I’ve mentioned this before because it has the funniest FAQ entry:

Q: Why does my computer start into a black screen after using DBAN?

A: You must reinstall an operating system because DBAN removes it.

and I started running it. Right now it says:
Runtime: 04:18:30
Remaining: 31:11:39
It’s done 12.52% of 250gb.

I’m not complaining at all – it’s doing thorough job – but I do wish I’d looked into the speed. I bought Jade Empire today and was hoping to start playing it.

More inane research

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It is a commonly held belief that Jupiter shields Earth from comets or asteroids that might otherwise hit us. BBC

It is?

Dr Jonathan Horner, with Professor Barrie Jones, has designed a computer model that tracked the paths of 100,000 Centaurs, over 10 million years, and recorded the number of objects that would impact the Earth.

Models mean zilch. Political parties have economic models which grandiosely predict how much better we will be with them and they are always wrong.

The results showed that the numbers of Earth impact events were the same for the cases with the real Jupiter and with no planet at all.

And?

The next phase of the project for the group is to assess the impact risk posed to the Earth by objects in the asteroid belt and the team will go on to study comets that venture into the Solar System from deeper out in space.

And precisely who on this actual real earth will benefit? Whose life will be made better by this research? No-one’s, that’s who. So what’s the damn point?

A Social Worker question.

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Is there a point to social workers? Do they ever do anything when they aren’t off the sick? Do they actually agree to take tasks instead of directing them to others? Do they possess spines? Do they ever agree to get anything done by any time? Are we better off without them? Has one ever done anything good? If so did the others ostracise them because a precedent could be set? Why don’t people slap into reality those that want to train to “help people” and choose the most slovenly career? Is managing social workers akin to managing sleeping people? How do they justify whatever they are paid because whatever it is it will be too much.

Social workers are a complete waste of time, energy and oxygen.

—–

Two social workers were walking through a rough part of the city in the evening. They heard moans and muted cries for help from a back alley. Upon investigation, they found a semi-conscious man in a pool of blood.

“Help me, I’ve been mugged and viciously beaten.” he pleaded.

The two social workers turned and walked away.

One remarked to her colleague, “You know the person that did this really needs help.”

—–

There isn’t a facebook group “Social workers are f*cking useless”.
Maybe I should create it.