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8.31.2004

2004-08-31 4:00 pm

[Tech]

Something funny happened to my laptop. Whenever I played any media file (wma with Windows Media Player or mov with QuickTime Player), I will get a system crasy saying "KERNEL_DATA_INPAGE_ERROR" on the file atapi.sys. I went to Google and found the following link:

http://www.annoyances.org/exec/forum/winxp/t1074443182

which does not seem to provide too much insight. And now I have problem booting up the machine. Once again it proves how fragile technology is. Sigh.

I then used the floppy disk drive to boot up Partition Magic, Partition Magic reported "Check Failed" on my work partition.

Boot-up another clean partition on the laptop and it was success. So it seems like something seriously messed up the working partition. It's good that I always keep a spare working partition though, so now I am going to first do some final checking on the "problem partition", and overwrite in case needed.

Somehow the harddisk is getting very irresponsive. That makes me wonder maybe the harddisk is dying ....

And then something else goes funky. I decided to simply get rid of the problem OS partition and replace it with the so called clean partition. BUt when I tried to copy it using Parition Magic, it says that the parition size is incorrect.

So I have to use scandisk to first fix the "clean c:" partition first. That took a while but eventually it processed well. Just when I was getting ready to copy the partition, I suddenly realized a huge problem.

The DVD+CDRW combo drive was NOT working.

This is very bad, because I rely on booting up the WinXP installation CD to process a bootcfg recure command. Without it, not only the newly duplicaed partition won't work, the original partition won't work neither.

I was fustrated, and try and try to see if I can get the CDROM working. AFter a few failed attempt (by pull and plug the CDRW drive, I sort of violently move the DVD reading and then plug in again. Surprsingly, I worked this time.

With the XP disc reciognized, I was about to copy the partition, but just the make the original partition more up-to-date, I tried to do a Windows update. Darn it failed as it hanged after installing the new ACtiveX for Windows Update. I said, screw it, I'll go ahead the partition copy.

And now the partition copying seems to work pretty OK, and eventually it's done.

AFter reboot, all seems like, both partition boot up properly, and I don't even need to mess with DVD Drive.

Now the ultimate test will be running a few media files and see if tehy worked out without crashing the machine.


EVerything seems to be back to normal now, except that I still have problem doing Windows update, I guess I'll worry about that mess later.


BTW, a side note:
Another article seems to recommanded using Knoppix 3.6 Live CD to recover problem NTFS partition. I haven't tried that one before, but seems to be something worth looking into:
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=7596



I am trying to find a way to catagorize my weblog message so that those who are interest in my personal life ([Personal]) doesn't have to be bored by my Software devlopment ([Dev]). For now I'll just add a category tag at the beginning of my message. Later I will try to do something more fancy.


[Dev]
I was pretty happy with VMWare so far, but today I received a curve ball when I tried to move some files from my hosting machine to the virtual machine. Later I figured out that it's because of the new network card that I added in order to saperate the Intranet and Internet connection. After adding a new virtual network adaptor, all is running OK now.

I read and heard some good stuff about DotNetNuke (an open source portal application), and decided to give it a try, but it turned out that it sort of required a SQL Server 2000, so I go ahead and install it. Throught out the process, I found out that SQL 2K Service Pak was stayed at sp3a since May 2003. That is good. It means SQL 2K is stable enough for more than a year. Now that's something I can recommand to my client to put in production environment. Anything that release a new service pak once 6 month has some problem with its stability.


[Tech]
The Tweak UI (part of the Microsoft PowerTool) is the easiest way to get rid of the login screen if you are the solo user of your machine.


[Personal]
I haven't touched software devlopment stuff for almost a year, and that worried myself for you know how fast technology changes. So I am starting to listen to the radio show "Dot Net Rocks" again, and planning to build a small application on my personal web site. It should gradually take its shape after this week.


[Tech]
The hecker world is just ultra scary. Perviously I thought that Windows 2003 Server was pretty success in the way of how they kept hackers from making their OS free for being upgradable using Windows update, but today I found a heck from www.suprnova.org that you can actually turn a trial version of Windows Server 2003 into a fully workable retail version, and you can totally use Windows Update to bring your OS to the latest and greatest stage! Man, this is ultra scary. But there's one important thing: read the instruction, especially don't reboot the machine after doing the Windows Update right away. Read the instruction and it will tells you how to workaround some problem. Otherwise after you reboot the machine, it will lock itself down and force you to go thru Windows Activitation.

Not that I am encouraging you to heck, though. :-E

8.24.2004

It��s hard to keep up with all the new technology. For instance, last night was my first time of trying out WiFi (Wireless Network) in person, and it was pretty cool.


I brought a 3COM 802.11b wireless LAN card from my friend (thanks, Tommy) last night, and the card worked instantly with requiring any driver on Windows XP. This is totally plug-n-play, which was cool enough by itself. And then it instantly discovered my elder brother��s wireless LAN. Because my brother left his network unprotected (actually a very bad idea :-S), I can get on his network and access Internet right away. Reading CNN news on my bed without any wire was a pretty cool experience. And YES, cnn.com was the first web site that I accessed, and not some Hollywood or some HK entertainment gossip sites :-E .

However, for a foreseeable future, I still won��t buy a WiFi card and a WiFi Router. First, I cannot justify paying $700 ($250 for the WiFi card and $450 for the WiFi Router) just for being cool. I mean, I don��t leave my room very often, and then two spots that I will stay in my room are my desk and my bed. I don��t see a need to surf the web on bed when my desk is just a few feet away. Also, my brother��s WiFi LAN is not always on. He turns it on only when he needs to use his laptop. So I HAVE to buy a WiFi router for my own Internet access in order to enjoy WiFi, unlike what I originally planned (buy the card only). Finally, I rarely bring my laptop outside of my room, not to mention very unlikely to bring to away from home. So the need for me to access WiFi at coffee shops or public hotspot is very low.

It��s cool to have WiFi on my laptop, but I just cannot justify the cost. I will, on the other hand, definitely set up a WiFi network when I get back to US. The distance between my desk and my living room will be much future away.