Haven’t run Spybot S&D on the laptop for a while so it’s updated and going now. It’s checking 813,297 threats. Mac users scoff at Windows users (though mac users will get it in the neck soon enough) but that number is so damn high and involves so many programs (not just dodgy downloads) it takes some work to keep a machine clean.
I have a netbook – Compaq CQ-10 – which came installed with Windows XP. As this was a machine I was going to be doing limited tasks on I installed Ubuntu to see what the fuss was about. It works but … upgrading a single app without adding repositories was a pain. Adding programs that weren’t in the official repositories was a pain. And the programs I wanted – an authoring program in particular – just did not exist. There were many on Windows, some on Mac and compromises on Linux. So for want of a decent tool off Ubuntu went and back came XP with a Vista bricopack applied. It has just what I need and I’m very happy. I’ve also pared down the services to what is needed and it’s fast too – fastest OS in the house.
One in four users turned off their anti-virus protection in response to performance problems after they installed security software, according to a survey by security software firm Avira. The Register
J has always used Windows and is a creature of habit. She is also reluctant to change in part for memory reasons. She has gone through a few laptops so when this one started showing signs of too much wear – keys falling off, knackered battery and more – but a new machine was needed. It is vital for her not a luxury. She was adamant though and didn’t like those ‘mac things’ despite the rest of us using them. What drove her over the edge though wasn’t the machine, wasn’t Windows updates – it was the never ending stream of AV updates (I’d tried all the good free ones). Yes she knew why but the hogging they caused and the ‘in your face’ nature meant that she agreed to a macbook (I debated another Windows machine but putting Ubuntu on but then the girls couldn’t help her). Thankfully due to Dropbox and my backing up everything else she lost nothing, not a single file. So did she switch because she didn’t like Windows? No. And does she like the mac? Not yet.
Look! A post mentioning a mac that doesn’t have a go at them! The restraint being shown is epic!
I liked in Windows 98 you could watch the disk defragmenting. Or at least you had something to watch as it rearranged all the little bricks of data into some better form of organisation. Right now J’s laptop is defragging to my left and Vista just has the twirly blue circle. Not as fun to watch. Her laptop had slowed over time – just like this mini which needs an OS reinstall – so it falls to me to sort. Not difficult, boring in fact. Made so by the fact it’s a Sony Viao laptop and that loads crap at startup which apparently one has to be pretty careful about removing. Far more fun to have a desktop with a clean install to play with. The PC my youngest uses has 11 entries in the log which hijackthis produces. The laptop has many more. Anyway, back when I first used Spybot Search & Destroy it looked for about 30,000 pieces of malware. It now looks for 1.19 million. That’s a seriously big number. The fact it is a Windows machine is a detail and Apple roll out Security Updates with increasing frequency but what is shows is the scale of the problem. Thankfully we have no Norton or other Symantec products installed. That would have made things so much more difficult.
Defragmenting hard disk (C:)... This may take from a few minutes to a few hours.
I told it to defrag, I’m okay with that bit. I started it. It began. So why not play the game and let me have a hint as to when it will end? I have a Win 7 installed on this machine. I’ll defrag that and see if I get little bricks.
And today’s problem is speakers. R speaker is quiet. Realtek drivers are up to date. All the sound properties are good, realtek sound manager is good and the auto test has a quiet r speaker. Nvidia driver (which I think is the culprit because that is all that changed) is v7.8.0.1. Plugged into the Zen all works well. I can’t see anything in the Bios menus that would affect balance/volume. Oddly, uninstalling the Realtek AC’97 Audio drivers didn’t actually do that. Headphones – which plug into the affected speaker (they are Logitech ones) – work fine.
So it’s only when the computer directly outputs to that speaker that the volume drops to almost nothing. But the speaker is okay. And the headphone link is okay. It’s very odd.
Edit:
Front jack produces the same result as the back one.
.. and I have no idea why. Steve suggested the sata driver floppy and while enabling the legacy USB which was the only change I made, I saw the drives as being recognised. So I’m installed and running. Very very odd. I’m happy of course.
Went to install Neverwinter Nights 2 and Jade Empire. I didn’t exactly read the boxes… my system should just run NWN2 but Jade might be tougher. So I could upgrade but I figure I’ll wait a bit. The desire to get my fingers in the machine’s innards is pretty low right now. And waiting will always see prices drop, though it’s probably not that much anyway.
We had Sky installed earlier – concession to the girls – and the guy doing it got chatting about his overclocked machine, the gfx card he had, ram etc. I said – as I have many times – that pc developers are lazy in that they will have hardware created for them, they use all available memory and then some more, that they force upgrades. I indicated the consoles by the TV and said that at least with them everyone knew what they were getting. His reply – “Yes, but consoles only have the gameplay”.
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? :)
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.
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.
I was going to reinstall XP today having assembled what I believe are all the parts – key, drivers (missing the AMD64 one right now but haven’t really looked for that yet), backed up files but I thought a day or two delay would be good. I just know that as soon as I agree to the reinstall that I will have that lightbulb moment and recall something I should have kept. So slow could be good.
I recommend running the Belarc Advisor first too.
And once that’s done it’s games. music and images only.
As for why install, I want to tune it up from a fresh start. Use one of BV’s guides and go to a minimal setting for services. I could install Ubuntu – but as games don’t run as well and as the image management I want is not there – I won’t.