undertakingyou

Normally I don’t do posts on anything windows because, well, I don’t like to use windows. But this one was just frustrating enough that I thought a quick writeup would be good.

I am helping a coworker with their personal laptop. It is a Toshiba something or other and at boot it was saying “Error in reading the disk” (or whatever the message is, you get the point). Knoppix quickly showed that not only is the disk readable and everything there but also the rest of the system works fine. Using knoppix I fixed the windows MBR but to no avail! The silly thing still wouldn’t boot. I popped in the Windows XP CD with the intention of doing a CHKDSK but to my great aggravation, the Toshiba laptop uses a sata controller that doesn’t have a driver in the Windows XP disk. Couldn’t do CHKDSK because it didn’t see a drive. Crap.

After some searches I ran into nLite. A tool to spin up your own XP disk. You can add drivers, files, windows updates, remove windows features and even have pre-installed software. To my great joy I got the driver needed for the intel 82801 SATA controller, spun up my own disk, and now this laptop is merrily performing the CHKDSK /P which HOPEFULLY fixes this problem.

Some things to note with nLite: Won’t work under wine worth a crap. Had to fire up my Windows VM to make it work. Otherwise it is pretty straight forward. Tell it where your windows disk is and where you want to store stuff on your hard drive. It will copy the windows files over and then give you a nice list of options to customize things. Seems as though sky is the limit, although I didn’t try it past adding some drivers. At the end it will make for you an .ISO which you can burn at your leisure. From there you are on your way to getting stuff done … even though it is windows.

I ran into an interesting snag the other day. I had a hard drive that was not showing up and therefore the system would not boot. I really found this odd, because it showed up to the bios, and all hardware tests said the drive was fine, so I thought I would try and run a FIXMBR on the drive to see if that was the problem. Now, here is where the snag comes up. Normally I would take my Windows installation disk, and once running I would use the ‘recovery console’ to run the command and be done with it. But the Windows disk would not start. It would hang on the ‘Inspecting your systems hardware configuration.’ So, I needed the Windows Recover Console, to run the command, but I couldn’t get the console . . . and the whole things crashes down.

I then found http://www.arsgeek.com/2008/01/15/how-to-fix-your-windows-mbr-with-an-ubuntu-livecd/ . I thought to myself, how perfect is that? I know that the ubuntu disk will run, and then I can perform the changes I need and away we go.

Some changes since the writing of my reference article. The ms-sys package is no longer in the repositories. If you go to their website you can download source and do a quick make, make-install.

After you have done that the rest is easy peazy. Once again, linux saves the day.

The other day I had an HP laptop with some problems. I sent it back, using their HP care stuff. I was pleasantly surprised with how fast they shipped everything, at their expence, and got everything back to me. But as I started the machine they didn’t have the wireless driver installed. Using their website they said that I had to have a broadcom card, and so I installed their provided drivers. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a broadcom card. They were wrong. All I had was the Vendor ID and Hardware ID.

After some searching I found http://www.pcidatabase.com/ . This website can just search by Vendor ID or Hardware ID and give you the information that you need to get stuff fixed. I have used it a couple of times and found it very helpful.

I have not worked with a Windows Vista computer in some time. I forgot how bad it sucked. Now, let us qualify sucking. I have never used a computer that has a respectable hardware stat-sheet, and been so dog slow in all of my life.

Case and point: Today I am using a Toshiba Laptop that has a Intel Pentium Dual-Core 1.6 GHz processor and 2 GB of ram. Now while these two figures alone do not give us a perfect picture of expected performance any machine with these components should be just fine.

I clicked the start orb, then on control panel. Ten minutes later the control panel came up. Ten minutes. I sat there waiting for just the control panel. I then selected ‘Network and sharing’, another 3 minutes. After it finally opens all looks fine there, I now need to add a printer. Go back to Control Panel. After 7 minutes of just sitting there with that blue donut whirling it finally did something. Yes folks, a flash of a blue screen and the computer restarted.

I wish that I could take this computer and do one of two things, install something else, like my favorite free operating system, or downgrade to Windows XP or upgrade to Windows 7. But alas, it is not my computer. It is the personal computer of a co-worker who needs access to certain things on our network. I won’t go into the pain of this running windows Vista Home Premium and that connecting even to drives in our active directory is a hack at best. That will be a post for another day.

I think we have all seen the little Volkswagon Bugs plastered with their oval logo. Or their vans, all decked out in black, white, and orange. If you have ever been to BestBuy you can’t even purchase a DVD player without the offer of a Geek Squad ‘Double Agent’ to come and install the item. They offer in home diagnosis of computer problems and can do computer repairs.

I have heard of others having poor experiences with Geek Squad. My brother Ryan had a computer gone for 12 weeks. Each day a new excuse as to why it wasn’t done. The other day one of the computers at our floral show was on the fritz. In fact, two were. I went to look at the computers but was only able to dedicate a limited time to my diagnosis. Not being able to complete the repair the choice was made to call Geek Squad. They needed to have the computer fixed and it made sense to have someone come over that was a ‘computer expert’ and would make ‘house calls’.

Geek Squad arrived and went to work addressing the problems. First, was a computer that was being plagued by pop-ups. Whenever I went to diagnose the problem no pop-ups happened and I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary in the processes list. Geek Squad looked at the computer and said that the hard drive had bad sectors and the computer needed to be replaced. Well, that may be true, but bad sectors don’t cause pop-ups. They found the first thing wrong and the first suggestion was to replace the computer. Not even just replace the hard drive, the whole computer needed to be new.

They then spent a few hours looking at the next computer. This computer needs to use the modem, and what was happening was that the modem would work for a short time, and then stop working. When you would try to make a call, it would say the telephony service had an error, and restarting the telephony service didn’t help. Geek Squad still hasn’t figured it out. I am waiting for them to say that we need a new computer or it will take 12 weeks in their shop.

The point is they never did address the problems that we asked them to. It seems they just want to ‘up-sell’ the consumer. In addition their diagnosis cost was enough that I would have expected more. Has anyone had a good Geek Squad experience?

I know that I have talked about it before. Many have talked about it before. But there really is additional hardships that come with administering a windows machine.

In this particular instance the machine has been running Windows XP fine with no problems whatsoever. No viruses, no spyware, nothing. I have this machine at my second office and VNC into it to do quite a bit of server administration (for my 3 windows servers) and using Microsoft Office when there is no alternative. So, I go to get into the machine today and it is acting weird. Stuff won’t open. For instance I get an error when trying to run adobe reader. So I restart the machine. I think nothing of it but I can’t ping the machine. Since the box is at a different location I just wait till I happen to be there.

What I find is that the machine will let me log in but when applying my ‘personal settings’ it sets there for a long time and then boots me out with the following error.

“A problem is preventing Windows from accurately checking the license for this computer. Error Code: 0×80090006″

Two issues I have with this message. First, what problem. Is it that files can’t be found? Is there some corruption on the disk? Is Sagittarius in special alignment with Saturn? What? Next, the cryptic error code number. If I only have one computer, what good is that code really going to do me? Even with web access why not tell me the issue right there. They have the code, and know what the code means. Put two and two together. This points back to number one issue.

So after a google search for this cryptic code I get some advice to reregister some DLL’s while in safe mode. No dice. Can’t get to safemode. So I do safemode with command prompt, and log in as the local administrator. I can get in. Apparently it doesn’t check the license in this case.

I reregister the DLL’s and low and behold . . . . no dice. Still won’t let me in. I get the same error message so I look at some Microsoft KB article on the subject. Do you want to know what Microsoft’s advice is for this particular message? I know I do! Reinstall your operating system. Yep, whatever magically happen it is way to mucked up to be fixed so we are going back to the drawing board on this one.

Even as I type I am trying one of the Windows XP’s ‘repair installs’ to see if this will work.

By way of comparison, I have messed up my Linux machines bad by changing file permissions or deleting my home folder. In each case a specific message is given saying what is wrong so that I can know how to fix it. Also, the answer is never an exasperated ‘just reinstall and start over’.

+1 for Linux.

My father-in-law, Kyle, upgraded his laptop to windows 7 tonight. I am surprised he didn’t upgrade sooner with how much he hated Vista. It makes me wonder if Vista was a big planned marketing scheme, but I digress. On to the real topic.

He asked me why something didn’t work prior to the upgrade so took a look at the machine. I was actually pleasantly surprised. I found a few things quite refreshing,
* The directory structures are a much welcomed improvement. By contrast however I couldn’t add something to the start menu because I couldn’t find the directory. All the forums I found refereed to non-existent directories.
* The power shell is actually useful. And familiar commands such as ‘ls’ and ‘man’ actually work. It makes me wonder if that has something to do with this article from slashdot.
* The system monitor in the management pane is actually useful and customizable.
* They fixed the problem with windows explorer not burning DVD’s (the original complaint) so Kyle was happy.
* I was pleased to find that the computer ran rather snappy. Didn’t seem sluggish at all.
* It is pretty, but you know what, most of the tray icons and things look like the ones in ubuntu Karmic.

Otherwise I was perplexed that in the upgrade it moved the entire Vista windows folder to Windows.Old and I was able to run programs that were in the ‘Program Files’ folder within that. I am not sure why, it seems very strange to me because Windows relies so heavily on registry entries to run anything.

It seems to suffer from some of the same old problems. The home version is watered down to the point of being crippled and you still have the default share of C$. Also viruses are a concern, but otherwise I was actually pleasantly surprised.

The other day I wrote a post about Mac OS and it quietly suggesting that people install anti-virus software. I want to bring up this link shown to me by my friend JC. In short, Apple has removed the knowledge-base article suggesting Mac OS users install anti-virus software. The reason that they removed this is that “The Mac is designed with built-in technologies that provide protection against malicious software and security threats right out of the box.”

Joseph brought up a great question, why are Operating Systems built on a *nix kernel more secure against malicious software than Windows. I think there are some fundamental reasons why this is true. First, Unix/Linux OS are actually multi user. Yep, I would contend that even though Windows can have ‘multiple’ users, it is not actually a multi user operating system. Let me explain. Unless you actually have a SysAdmin that is going to change it, Windows by default will let anyone look at, write to, and execute any file regardless of who’s file it is (Windows files don’t actually have ‘owners’). So, who cares that it isn’t a multi user system? Well, instead of having programs that are restricted to specific services based on which user it is actually running under any program can do anything and has access to any service.

With any file having access to anything it brings up the second point. Unix style systems keep the operating system separate from the other programs. Windows does not protect itself in any way. It will let any program install and even change vital system dll’s within the Windows32 folder. Further more it will do this with no verification that this is actually being run by someone with proper authority.

Now any system could be compromised depending on what software is run. It is important to know and trust where software is coming from. Most Linux/Unix software comes from online repositories that are verified by GPG key. If someone has changed the repository the package management system will throw up a warning. Furthermore the majority of software that is not received from an online repository will give an md5 sum to verify that the package hasn’t been tampered with. By way of contrast Windows updates, and software for windows received off the internet has no verification method whatsoever.

I’m sure that more experience will lend to more reasons for greater system strength. If anyone has further thoughts on this I would love to hear it.

So, I had an interesting IT issue. It seems that one of my windows users was having some real problems with internet explorer. I showed her firefox but it doesn’t seem to do it for her. So, after much digging I decide the best thing is to download IE and do a good old R&R. Well, that broke things nearly beyond repair. Now there is no internet. So I go to do a windows update and it won’t load the site in IE, because it is broken. And windows update doesn’t work in FF . . . just because. So, I manually update to IE7 and I still can’t update the machine and only half the web will pull up. So, here are my two gripes.

1. With an integrated browser if you do have some big meltdown you can’t do a simple remove and replace, you must reinstall the whole OS.
2. When you only can use your integrated browser for OS updates if you have a browser problem you have to install the OS to fix the browser so you can fix the OS. It is a crappy catch 22.