Linux Fails Again

Ubuntu CDs arrived the other day, spent some time looking stuff up on how to get the modem working while using the live CD; went to install it before I tried out any of the stuff I found and discovered that it the Ubuntu installer didn't detect any HDD's and thus wouldn't let me install.

All I can say is that Linux has had it's 6th or so try and still hasn't been able to be usable as an OS. Thankfully I used another HDD this time so I didn't loose Windows or any of the data on it and was able to happily install Vista which turned up no problems.

Previously different Linux distribution have done various things such as after happily formatting my hard drive failing to start X, leaving me without an internet connection (now that I realise I wouldn't have the drivers or whatever for the modem so I would've been screwed anyway) or a working computer (OEM refused to install with modified HDD). It has happily formatted my hard drive only to to stop installing half way through.

FreeBSD might not be as user friendly but at least it's not as destructive as Linux has been. Windows usually never encounters problems and has so far never left me without and OS.

Vista Ahoy

I downloaded a copy of Vista Ultimate a while ago (let’s just say torrented) and recently installed it. I didn't really know what to expect from it, I’ve used it before for short periods of time and was annoyed with how things are rearranged from XP. I was a bit wary after hearing all the things people say about it online and I have a friend with a Sempron and although I can't say for sure whether it was due to Vista or another problem such as the laptop itself it was slow, real slow.

I'll start by saying that the computer I will be installing Vista on is a Acer laptop that has had numerous conflicts and problems using a combination of XP with a plethora of Acer utilities that serve little purpose other than to add bloat and cause errors some of which may not be immediately associated with the Acer utilities.

The installation process was simple and required answering a few questions and partitioning the drive before installing. The installation took about 30-60 minutes to fully setup and takes me to the desktop.

One of the first things I noticed in exploring Vista is that all the applications Acer bundles with all their laptops have even less place in Vista than they did in XP. Vista comes with pretty much all the functionality of the Acer utilities.

Vista seems faster than XP, this is probably due to not having all the Acer applications slowing it down, but either way it's good.

Vista included working drivers for everything in my laptop apart from a card reader and a webcam, both drivers were found reasonably easily on the Acer website.

By default all Acer laptops come with three separate partitions, one is a PQSERVICE partition that cannot be modified. This contains the Acer equivalent of HP's useless (temporary) tattoo that allows you to install the OS that comes with the PC. It also comes with two partitions: C:\ and D:\ halving disk space. In my case both partitions were FAT32. Not seeing the purpose of this arrangement I decided to use the Disk Managers Shrink and Extend functionality to shrink D:\ to 2GB and increase the C:\. Wanting to keep the drive as a Basic disk I found I had to create an extra partition with the space freed from D:\ and play Tower of Hanoi to make the free space sequential to C:\ so that I could expand the C:\.

Overall Vista is pretty good, and while some people have problems with it; I personally haven't had any trouble and after getting used to the new locations of things I’ve become pretty happy with it and I won’t be going back to XP unless I have to.

Sneaky Sneaky

After foolishly playing around with trojans/exploits and the like I decided to check the worthiness of Process Explorer. One thing that stood out as not being normal was PSIService which I promptly disabled, deleted the service and removed all offending PSI*.dll files.

After removing this ProtexisLicensing crap from my install I found that two programs that I have installed failed to open due to the missing spyware: Corel's Paint Shop Pro XI and RPGMXP.

Luckily I found a workaround: rename PSIKey.dll to PsiClient.dll and everything returns to normal sans the afore mentioned .dll files and service running. Just for reference, to delete the service use the command "sc delete ProtexisLicensing" in the run box or command prompt.

Obviously this defective attempt at DRM does nothing as both of the Protexis affected programs were not only easily had Protexis bypassed but were pirated in the first place. (Not condoning piracy or admitting to having pirated software of course.)

The Return of the Laptop

My laptop arrived back recently, after 9 weeks of being "repaired".
Some points i'm dissapointed with in particular:

• It took 9 weeks to get back to me, the hell?
  
• The lid of the laptop is scratched pretty badly, thankfully the screen is alright.
• There was a bit of oil on some of the keys.
• I found a worm, a few Trojans and downloaders.

The Trojans are somewhat worrying, although since I connected it to the internet before I had a proper firewall installed I can't be sure if they are there from a Windows exploit, or a malicious technician working for Acer.
Thankfully after I replaced Windows Firewall with Comodo Firewall I was able to see the applications try hooking into Internet Explorer and directly accessing the internet and remove them; helped by a Avast! boot time scan and a Spybot S&D scan.

Good Free Apps

I thought i'd make a list of the legitimately free apps I use for basic computing tasks.

Avast!
SpyBot S&D
Free Download Manager
7-Zip
OO.org
Comodo

Acer Support Sucks

Agh, Acer support is terrible! This is the fifth or sixth week after I have sent away my laptop for repair (of what I think is a issue with their software).


Start, Week 1: Sent away Laptop
End, Week 1: Rang Acer, they claim they JUST recieved the Laptop. Fair enough.

End, Week 2: They were still "repairing" the Laptop.

End, Week 3: The Laptop had reportedly finished being repaired and was being sent back to me.

End, Week 4: After 4 weeks of being "repaired" I was told for some reason the Laptop was in transit overseas for reasons unkown.


It's been a further two weeks now since I last rang, i'm starting to think they've lost the Laptop or simply don't care; Beware Acer products, if they break or are damaged then you've just wasted your money. Avoid.

http://avoidacer.com Apparently Acer support sucks regardless of where you are in the world.

Netbeans

All is working, it seems a nice IDE even though I fail to understand how to make a GUI and none of the Java tutorials are very good.

All the Java tutorials either go into the very basics of what a variable is or they go into a whole load of theory and not very much actual programming.

Safe to say that Sun Microsystems site sucks in every possible way.

I wouldn't recommend NetBeans to others either, it may be somewhat interesting but it's a hassle to get it going right.

Smilies

=) =/ =\ =| =( =D =P =x =o =O -_- ^_^ o_o x_x ^-^ >_> XD :) :( :/ :S :x :[ :\ :< :> D: :D :'(

NetBeans/JDK Update

Well, it appears I actually downloaded the JDK this time but it turns out that NetBeans 5.5 wont look for JDK 7 and that I need to have JDK 5 or 6 installed.

Needless to say this is starting to frustrate me, especially since NetBeans lacks an option to manually search for a JDK.

Now on to downloading JDK 6 I suppose. If this doesn't work i'm going to give up on Java for at least this year.

JDK Update

Great, so I FINALLY finish a 30MB download of what I thought was the JDK7 download.
Ho, Ho, Ho, I was foolish to believe that a download on the JDK7 DOWNLOAD PAGE, would actually *gasp* be the JDK!

Turns out I downloaded a JRE that requires the JRE to run. Funny, isn't it; you might think that for a second Sun would try to attain some aspect of ease of use.

This is starting to turn out to be more hassle than what I believe it's worth, Java applications don't have a history of being able to use Windows themes; preferring to use their own dull grey theme to stand out and uglify the OS.

Privoxy

Privoxy is an awesome application/proxy once one learns to configure it.

The first time I used it was part of the Vidalia/Tor/Privoxy bundle where I thought it's only purpose was to be used as part of the Tor implementation, but after reading about it on Wikipedia a few years later I decided to give it another go.

I once again decided to go with the Vidalia bundle just for the sake of being able to use Tor if I ever wanted to.
The first thing I did after installing it was to comment out the Tor related preferences in configuration files, this allowed me to run Privoxy without having it try to pass everything to a non-existant port, yet by commenting and not deleting I allowed for it to be easily re-implemented if I ever decided to use it with Tor again.

According to the Wikipedia article (which lacked citation) the neilvandyke.action ruleset is one of the most popular rulesets avaliable for Privoxy, so I decided to add these rules into my Privoxy config.txt.
Avaliable as the'Main Configuration' or 'config.txt' file, the Main Configuration is meant to store data related to the running of Privoxy.
To install neilvankdyke.action look for a group of "actionsfile" entries and add "actionsfile neilvandyke" under "actionsfile user".

While there has been the occasional problem with page redirects and sites being blocked without notification my general experience with Privoxy has been highly positive and is something I would recommend to people with a knowledge of editing configuration files, of course there is a web interface which might prove to be accesible to those too afraid to modify configuration files; but the most power comes from direct editing.

Would you like a cup of Java with your NetBeans?

The Netbeans 5.5 CD I ordered a few weeks ago has now arrived.

Shame it doesn't include the JDK alone with it; All the differing versions of Java are somewhat confusing.
Should I download JDK6 which seems to be the stable version with development having ceased.
JDK7 which appears to be the new version.
Or OpenJDK which doesn't seem to actually be a JDK but rather just javac and the Java Virtual Machine.

I ended up deciding to go with JDK7, shall update after the download (30MB .jar file).

Bye Bye Laptop

After not only crashing, but now returning a BSOD on every boot I decided I had enough.
I rang Acer support and am now getting the laptop sent away due to possible heat damage.

Therefore I am now using my desktop for everything until the Laptop returns. :(
It's weird how everything looks so different without wide-screen and all the other differences my laptop makes.

I also forgot how slow and crapped up my desktop was.

Icon ftw!

AHAHAHA, YES! THE ICON IS MINE.

I have laboriously worked up my ladder wins in Warcraft 3 and I have finally attained the first Night Elf icon.

The first level icons require you to get 25 wins with any race/random which is a lot harder and time consuming than it sounds :).

Acer Laptop Woes

I'll start by saying this is not the first time this has happened to me, I solved the problem before by formatting; but as that was when I first got it I didn't mind as much as I do now.

As sometimes happens I left my Acer 5672WLMi laptop on and I fell asleep, when I woke back up and checked up on the Laptop the screen had turned black.

Restarting the computer solved nothing as the XP logon screen was covered with static and all sorts of graphical errors.
Booting into safe mode worked so I ran a system restore and rebooted into Windows. Hurray! I am now able to boot into Windows! But before I could get myself into a celebratory mood Windows started it's glitching and disabling the backlight/freezing.

I went back into safe mode and used msconfig to put the computer into "Diagnostic Startup" and reboot, XP happily logged on and even after finishing loading it didn't freeze/die!
But as a computer is pretty empty without any services/applications running I eliminated the options of what the problem could be, turning things on one at a time.

First I enabled System.ini and Win.ini as those are core Windows components, then Services, then Startup items.
Once I found the problem to be contained in the startup options I started a process of elimination by turning on things like the Firewall and Antivirus.

But I had a thought while I was doing this, the problem occurs after a time of startup; now what starts up last on the laptop? The ATi application!
As it turns out cli.exe was causing the static/glitching/graphical errors/freezing/etc and the laptop runs happily without it.

As a summary for people having the same trouble: Use safe mode to do a System Restore and msconfig to disable the 'cli' startup entry.

Now I still have the problem of why it's doing this, I was unable to find any related problems through Google or searching forums so it's still somewhat of a mystery for me.
I will try a update of the graphics driver even though it is limited by acer, this problem is somewhat bugging me so I will try to find a proper solution.

Solaris

The Solaris CDs I ordered a month or so ago finally arrived, it's nice to have things to play with in a virtual machine, my useless dial-up doesn't let me download much so getting things on CD allows me to try thins out. :)

New Xbox Games

I have bought 3 games that were relatively cheap bargin bin titles:

Dynasty Warriors 4
Lego Starwars 2
Metal Arms: Glitch in the system

Their decent games, although so far i've mainly been playing Dynasty Warriors so I can beat the game once before moving onto Metal Arms, I'll save Lego Star wars for now; Better as a multiplayer game I thinks.

My First Review™

Alright! I decided to write a review for Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne on Gamespot since I added it and play it so often. :)

So go read it and mark it as helpful!

My gamespot review.

CompTIA A+++++++++

I sat both of the new 2006 CompTIA A+ exams last week, part of their new examinations involves sitting an "Essentials" test and choosing one of three exams; I chose the IT Technician exam because it seems to encompass more than the other two specific exams.

The exams were reasonable in difficulty; there's not a lot of material for the new exams, but with the old exams expiring soon that should hopefully change.
I read Mike Meyers 6th Edition A+ book to study for the test; the testing software on the CD imitates the actual exam pretty well, although there was a lot of other stuff I didn't see the point of using on the CD too.

I passed the exams, waited a few days and attempted to sign into the CompTIA website after confirming Prometric had passed me. I can now officially claim to be a CompTIA A+ IT Technician.
Why not just have CompTIA A+ and then specify IT Technician separately I'll never know, but that's the way it appears all over their records of my pass.

Winner!

You have won!
.
.
.
.
Nothing!

Lappytoppy

Seems that everything on my desktop is pretty much corrupted or not working in some way, the laptop is making for a excellent replacement; especially being more powerful than the Desktop.

Un-installed ZoneAlarm and installed Comodo Firewall Pro, Comodo is actually pretty good; ZoneAlarm was probably the reason behind the blocking of most ICS traffic.
I removed ZoneAlarm because of it's insane slowdown effect.

Laptop Mania

I got myself a Laptop this week, I got a Acer Aspire 5672WLMi that says Aspire 5670 on the monitor part.
Acer did what it usually did and formatted my one 100GB HDD into two 30GB FAT32 partitions and a 'QTPARTION' recovery partition.
This is apparently pointless as NTFS is better than FAT32 in everything but speed and having one 60+GB partition would've been a lot better than two smaller ones.
The installer installs a lot of crap onto the laptop that while beneficial, are not needed; Fortunately Norton 2006 was the only software that served no purpose for me.
The Laptop came with Windows XP SP2 installed, but newer ones will come with Vista.

Free Design Templates

Some web-sites offer high quality templates for the best price you would ever get - for free. You can download Flash-based templates as well as CSS-based layouts; furthermore, you can use them for your personal and commercial projects without any restrictions whatsoever. This article shows, where you'll find them.

~Ignore my comment


read more | digg story

WVTP6 Install Guide

Steps for a "Clean" install of Vista Transformation Pack 6.0


1. Install WindowBlinds

2. Reboot and Login

3. Reboot again, pressing F8 after screen goes black

4. Enter Safe Mode

5. Click Yes to enter safe mode

6. Run "Vista Transformation Pack 6.0.exe"

7. Untick "Set Windows X's shrine as default home page" and click Next

8. Click through the next few screens, agreeing to the licencse agreement

9. Select "Apply Vista UI transformation to system" and click Next

10. Select appropriate settings and click Next

11. Select "I want to perform system files transforming" and click Next

12. Tick all boxes, except those that you don't want to change and click Next

13. Repeat step 12

14. Tick all boxes, except "Install LClock"; "Install VisualTooltip"; "Install Blaero's Start Orb"; "Install thoosje's Vista Sidebar"; "Install Styler with Kaye's skin"; and anything else you don't want.

15. Select Transform and Yes to all prompts

16. Log into Windows after installer restarts computer

17. Open WindowsBlinds and select "Aero Style" and "Apply this skin now".

18. If after loading, UI reverts to classic interface; repeat step 17

19. Reboot

20. You should now have Vista Transformation pack 6.0 fully setup, if you want to install any of the options unselected you can now search and install them manually

Windows Vista Transformation Pack

I found an interesting app "Windows Vista Transformation Pack".
Currently at version 6 this app modifiies Windows XP resources to look like those found in Vista.

I found the best usage of this program, is in combination with Window Blinds; which allow transparency and a better looking start icon.

However, after searching I found little to no description or help with any of it's components and came to the conclusion that it was better not to install the "extras" along with it.

Incidently, when I removed this app I found none of my themes work; While System Restore fixes it back to a certain time, I had been messing around with my clock settings and the System Restore state at which I had installed WVTP had lots of changes with the system and apps, that I undid it and re-installed it.

I wrote a guide to help those new to installing it, to help them avoid unecessary restarts and installs/removals; so far I haven't hosted it anywhere so i'll post it as the next post; it'll have the same "wvtp" label as this post.

Console Mania

There's been lots of crazy talk about consoles and how no-one will make games for the PS3, etc, etc.

Then there are the Mario crazy fanboys who love everything Nintendo,
regardless of how many Mario/Yoshi/Pokemon games there are.

The Wii is obviously a powerless console and only gets ports, people think
that it's just a matter of time before someone other than Nintendo truly "uses the potential" of
their mis-understood console/handheld.
But look at the DS, so far the best games are all Nintendo games centering
around their age old IP of Mario and friends. 
Then there's it's online play; First you need to get "numbers" from people (most likely strangers
from various fan-sites), on the DS this number doesn't even stay constant! You'll need to find out the codes that are generated from a combination of both the DS and the game.

The Xbox 360 on the other hand does a "360" from this seperatist system and
integrates everything with a name, chosen by the user.
That's only the start, the 360 has a "Universal Interface" that retains information about the user regardless of if they are in a game or not.
This allows the accumulation of "Gamer Points" which allow users to show off their Achievements in games.

I haven't been near a PS3, since it's not been released locally yet; but from preliminary looks, it looks overpriced and the same as the last few Playstations.
Being able to run a custom OS looks interesting, if the mod community could take advantage of this, then
we might see some of the activity that made the original Xbox mod scene so popular (if it comes down in price).

People need to remember that terms like 1080p and HD are mainly marketing terms and mean mostly nothing in terms of quality. If you want high resolutions, AA, AF, HRD and other things that "actually affect" image
quality, get a PC!.