Posts Tagged ‘os’
My Vista hell pt. 2
Sunday, June 22nd, 2008
June 22nd 2008
Woot! I finally managed to upgrade to XP from Vista. Sure, I said I would do this several weeks ago, but first I couldn’t find the time, and then I needed my computer to find a job, and also – Upgrading an Acer M5620 with a normal XP SP2 cd was impossible.
As I was installing the Win XP disk threw up a Blue Screen of Death (BSOD). I tried to find out what might have caused this and suspected a faulty CD (genuine) to hardware error. In the end (and this took me several weeks) I found out that it was simply missing drivers for the RAID on my machine.
So I tried a couple of times by loading the drivers using F6 during the installation, but it caused other errors.
In a final attempt I followed instructions for slipstreaming the drivers onto a new install disk, which, lo and behold I also could set up to unattend the installation. Extremely useful. It both made the installation go smoother and quicker, as well as get around the issue of the drivers.
So finally I now sit on a clean system. No irritating memory hogging Vista in the way. Plus I can now install Ubuntu again as a secondary system.
I just need to adjust the partitions on the machine, but after that is done it should be clear sailing.
Let’s hope it will go smoother than the install itself.
My Vista hell pt.1
Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008
June 3rd 2008
Brilliant! Got myself a new computer, as I had to scrap my old trusty Shuttle from 2003. Got myself a new Acer, a new screen and new speakers. Yes. Ready to go and start doing some proper work on this gigantic machine.
Oh no. It would not be so easy would it? Generally I quite like Microsoft, at least since XP. I was an unfortunate user of Millennium for about 3 months, which I switched for Win 98 as soon as I could. Let’s just say that Windows Vista Home Premium will have an even shorter lifespan on my machine.
Sure, it looks good, and it connects to my Xbox 360 without a hitch, BUT for working on I could not have imagined any worse piece of crap.
First off, being a designer and web developer I wanted a stable environment to work on. So I installed Adobe CS 3. Great, Vista tried to block me every step of the way with all the new “security features”. That was pretty easy to fend off. It works, even though the combined strength of Vista AND photoshop at the same time almost brought my new machine to a halt. That should have set off a warning light in my head, but I ignored it, because I wanted to give MS the benefit of a doubt.
OK, set up XAMPP, it is a breaze normally for a good localized development environment – yes, I am “one of those” who do not particularly enjoy to get bogged down in setting up web servers from scratch. I LIKE GUI – so sue me. Anyway, it seemed to work and I strolled along quite nicely (after repeatedly telling Vista that I really, really, REALLY wanted apache, mysql and Filezilla running), So I continued to set up my machine.
Had to download new drivers for almost everything, as XP drivers are not good enough, and my webcam was not compatible, so had to buy a new one.
Then it happened. During the course of installing some type of peripheral like my speakers or webcam, XAMPP started doing something quite strange – the very moment I clicked Apache to start – BSOD (Blue Screen Of Death). Come on!! BSOD??? On VISTA? I thought this was long gone and burried together with Action Quake for all the gods sake!
Anyway, Vista starts up again, searches for a reason and replies “Aha, I found a solution”.
What was the solution, you wonder in child-like exitement? “Please keep on sending error reports so we can figure out what went wrong”. Well, you got it, Pal. It is now about a week since this started happening. At first only once or twice, but since yesterday I SWEAR I have caused this to happen about 96 times (if you are to believe indicator for error reporting).
Well, sod it. I have thought about this long and hard, and even if I do like the nice look of Vista it is really not worth all this hastle. In the words of one of my techie friends “Microsoft Windows is like a woman. XP was getting a bit old, and you were used to her good looks. Along came Vista, all nice and tarted up. Of course you wanted to play with her, please her and see what she could do to please YOU. Only after a few days you notice things that are really annoying, which your old girl friend didn’t question. Vista asks a lot of questions, refuse to use the same tools like your old girlfriend, and basically try to stop you as soon as you are having fun. Want my opinion? Go back to your old girlfriend. You will appreciate her more, and forgive the qurikiness. And while you are at it, why not have that new girl from down Africa, Ubuntu, on the side? They will play nicely together and not really care if you have one or the other.”
So long Vista, I am sorry, I will have to break up with you. Oh, and it is YOU and not me that is at fault here.
