New Build, Not Re-installing the OS

After yet another surgery last December, I was finally able to do something I actually like doing about six weeks ago. Things are slowly but surely beginning to resemble normalcy.

After getting our tax refund, it seemed a good time to build a new computer. As I always have pieces and parts about, it’s not too expensive. I had a case already, but it only accepts a micro-ATX board. It seemed like a good excuse to try AMD’s 780G chipset. This chipset integrates ATI HD 3200 graphics on the north bridge, and allows adding a graphics card in a PCIe x 16 slot to achieve crossfire performance.

My choices included: a Gigabyte MA78GM-US2H mother board, AMD Athlon X2 7750 cpu (Kuma core, AM2+), and 4 GB of OCZ Gold 1066 DDR2 RAM. I ended up replacing a power supply too before the build was stable, so I bought an OCZ StealthXStream 500w PS. All of this stuff went into a nice black mATX case along with a 250 GB WD SATAII drive (with Ubuntu 8.04 already installed on it) and a Samsung OEM DVD-RW that were in the original Ubuntu box I had.

Now you might be asking whatever possessed me to use a drive with a pre-installed OS on it. It was kind of a test of the stability of Ubuntu. Could it handle all the hardware changes, including going from an Nvidia FX 5500 AGP discrete graphics card to the ATI built-in graphics. This transition seemed easier than a motherboard swap I did on my wife’s computer last fall under XP without a fresh install. Even though all data was backed-up first in both cases, it was still less labor intensive than having to re-install all software and reload that data. But with Windows, I had to back-step service packs first, then re-install SP 3 and all the updates subsequent to that. What a pain!

Additionally, we have lots of data, some over 25 years old that has crossed from an Atari 8-bit, to an Atari ST, then a Mac+ (System 6.0.x), Mac II (System 7.1), then to Windows 3.x, through ‘95, ‘98, NT 3.51, NT 4.0, XP, and now Linux. I know what you’re thinking̶–what kind of fool does that? My answer is: just a fool that can’t let go of the first BASIC code he ever wrote.

After 2 incremental upgrades to Ubuntu, I now have Ubuntu 9.04 as my main platform on fairly modern hardware. So far, I like it, and without having to do an OS re-install. Only problem is the ATI 3D driver doesn’t fully support Compiz. But I can live without all the bells and whistles Compiz adds. Yes, Compiz looks nice when it works, but I can’t see the benefit in terms of functionality over the plain Gnome desktop, now at version 2.26.1 with Ubuntu 9.04. That’s good enough for me.

Ubuntu 9.04 is great! My wife will continue being a Windows user (it helps pay the bills), but I see no reason for me to ever go back. And I’m not going to need to purchase Windows 7 twice for our separate personal computers. Goodbye to Microsoft and their intrusive Genuine Advantage or whatever they’re going to call it now. And goodbye for now to the hassles of anti-virus worries.

More Fun! XP SP 3, Ubuntu 8.04, etc.

Well I call it fun.

If I had no computer technology to complain about, my otherwise pleasant nature could turn ugly. At least it gives me an outlet for any built-up negative energy. Better to unleash it at the maroons in Redmond or even my own incompetence than onto those near and dear to me.

First of all, typing has become more and more frustrating for me if not downright difficult since my last two surgeries. I’ve begun a quest for free open source speech recognition software. So far the best results I’ve had consist of several projects that require you to compile code on your own. You need to be ready to solve your own problems—as well as contribute your solutions to the project(s)—if you want open source speech recognition now. You need to be able do a lot of typing just to get the code running. And I won’t tweak code to run within Ubuntu, which is based upon testing and unstable releases of Debian. It would be better to do this in Debian Etch if possible. Right now I’m running Debian Etch only virtually within MS Virtual PC. That’s not a good way to test and tweak hardware dependent software. Debian Etch should be installed onto it’s own hard drive or partition so it can run natively if I want to do this. Most likely I’ll wait for the folks at Carnegie Mellon’s Sphinx project (funded through DARPA), the Simon Project on SourceForge.net, and the Open Mind Speech project, another SourceForge.net hosted project, to come closer to their respective goals. With all these motivated and resourceful groups working towards the same end, the fruit of their efforts should be realized soon. I hope to contribute to the Open Mind Speech project, which plans to release their product under the GPL. I’ll try to keep up with all these projects and report what’s going with them here.

Secondly, I’ve been very busy just trying to stabilize my systems while considering that the release of Windows XP’s Service Pack 3 may have been pushed forward to roughly coincide with the release of Ubuntu’s latest incarnation. At any rate, between the two of them, the dust has finally settled. Now I have XP SP 3 settled in and operating smoothly on one box, while the AMD64 version of Ubuntu 8.04 is running great on another computer here. Both upgrades were somewhat problematic for me, either due to my aforesaid technological incompetence, imminent hardware failure, or problems within the packages themselves. One thing I’ve learned over the years is that nothing is bug-free.

When Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) was released on April 21st, the servers got hammered, so I waited until the following Saturday morning, April 26th, to start the upgrade. Update Manager downloaded 1,380 packages for my system. I had lots of software installed, including Ubuntu Studio’s real-time kernel, midi sequencing and music notation. I have a 3 mbps connection, but it averaged only about 80K per second as opposed to a “normal” full-speed (approximately) 360k/sec. It took a while, but it finished.

Even with known hardware problems (bad DIMM slot, flaky AGP interface, and, as it turns out, a soon-to-fail hard drive), the update worked fine. In fact, I was impressed at the manner in which an error was handled, much better than the way the same problem was handled when updating to Gutsy, which eventually turned out to be the soon-to-fail eIDE hard drive. Even though I had Hardy running well, I replaced the motherboard and started a fresh OS install the next weekend. In the meantime I decided it was time to run Microsoft Update on my XP Pro installation and was informed that Service Pack 3—now at version 2—was available.

What a can of worms that turned out to be. Actually, it was two cans of worms opened nearly simultaneously. First of all, the newly upgraded XP SP 3 system wouldn’t re-boot. Fortunately the data was intact. In the mean time I determined that the hard drive on my Linux box would imminently fail. Hardy Heron installed with the newly replaced motherboard but failed to boot even though Debian Etch installed and ran subsequently. But the Debian install was faulty as well, getting errors when concatenating large downloaded files. The XP system, having an ATSC TV tuner and Beyond TV from SnapStream, needed a new—and bigger—SATA hard disk since I needed to do a fresh install anyway. That way I could use the older and smaller (250gb) SATA hard drive to replace the bad 160gb eIDE drive on my Linux system. So began the odyssey of the past 6 weeks. There’s been several ups and downs I need not go into here besides moving a sizable quantity of data. And there’s no need to go into detail about my not always astute silicon mining excursions at our local computer recycling center, The Surplus Exchange.

Now I understand why Service Pack 3 was held back from Automatic Updates. While an improvement over all, certainly some things will break, especially if there are flaws in your current XP SP2 installation. Even though getting everything working again was a little bit of a pain, it’s been worth it. There are improvements in XP SP3 that should make most XP users happy. I know I am. It looks much better and seems faster. The only drawback I’ve found is that some low-priority applications that were previously well behaved, specifically Beyond TV’s ShowSqueeze routine, now hogs CPU cycles, making it virtually impossible to run anything else concurrently, and difficult to halt by bringing up the Task Manger, even using the preemptive ctrl-shift-escape key combination. (BTW, I use that combination exclusively rather than ctrl-alt-delete. That way I don’t inadvertently restart Windows.) Just be sure to schedule such tasks when you know you won’t be trying to use the system for anything else.

Ubuntu 8.04 (AMD64) is now running great on a nearly identical hardware setup—except for CPU speed and hard drive size—as the XP box. It does all I ask of it. Install nsplugin wrapper to use 32-bit plug-ins with your 64-bit web browser. Flash 9 and other plug-ins now work in a 64-bit environment. One other thing I now have working that I didn’t before is the Macintosh emulator Basilisk II. I have access to a bunch of my old System 7.x.x Mac files I haven’t seen for years. Hidden in there were some projects, graphics files, word processing files and financial data worth keeping. Now I can port them to my Linux system. Basilisk II runs on Windows and OSX too. Take a look at this new screenshot of all this stuff loaded at once.

I have another procedure scheduled for tomorrow, June 9th. Hopefully I will make another post soon.

But whatever you do, make it fun!

Psystar Takes On Apple

To ZDNet readers, this is a rehash of my posts to Adrian Kingsley-Hughes’ Hardware 2.0 blog article, “Psystar: Apple’s terms violate U.S. monopoly laws.” But I think it’s worth re-posting here for those who may not have read anything about this development.

Psystar is selling generic hardware with Apples’s OSX Leopard installed. In an effort to head off litigation from Apple, Psystar claims that Apple’s OSX End User License Agreement creates a vertical monopoly.

In my opinion, Psystar is going about this the wrong way. I believe Apple violates the license to the FreeBSD kernel by tying down their OS to proprietary hardware. It’s not stated clearly in the FreeBSD license, but perhaps there’s a way to invalidate the Apple EULA based upon their licensing of FreeBSD. If there’s a way in, I think that’s it. To me it’s the same as if Hewlett Packard only licensed Redhat Linux Enterprise to run on HP hardware. How idiotic would that be? There’s little overhead to reproducing software for distribution. Note that I didn’t say development.

Explain why there’s been little if any effort to shut down OSx86? Surely if Apple had a legal leg to stand on, they would have nipped the OSx86 Project in the bud. Perhaps the restrictive EULA is nothing more than an invitation for hackers to try to make it work. You unwitting dupes! Could the Apple EULA be a way around a non-compete agreement with MS and nothing more? If end users break Mac OSX’s shackles, then Apple is not accountable for OSX being made available to everyone. Remember MS infusing cash into Apple several years ago? Could this be the real crux?

To make it all legal, maybe Apple could package a little sticker with OSX copies similar to what MS did with OEM copies of XP. Putting that on your computer could in fact make you in compliance with the Apple EULA. I think I have an old Apple logo sticker somewhere around here from when I owned a Mac II.

Low Latency—What’s It Good For?

This has been an unanticipated adventure: getting my midi keyboard working with Ubuntu. After installing the midi sequencer of choice, on running, it informed me that the system timer resolution was too low. Having only used midi software in Windows previously, this seemed cryptic, yet understandable. Obviously the midi software wasn’t able to set interrupts at frequent enough intervals for real time processing.

This led to a somewhat frantic search to solve this problem. It’s amazing what you can find if you but look. Another flavor of Ubuntu, Ubuntu Studio, and a specialized 64-bit Debian release, 64 Studio, were unearthed in my quest. What a revelation!

I’ve been an amateur musician nearly all my life. In my experience, musicians aren’t in the least intimidated by technology when it can aid them in their pursuit. This observation was validated upon close examination of both these releases. The software included far exceeds my modest needs.

Video production, 3D modeling, multimedia content creation and desktop publishing tools are also part of the the two Debian-based distributions. If real-time processing is a necessity for you, I urge you to give Ubuntu Studio and 64 Studio a look.

Installation of Ubuntu Studio was simply a matter of finding the packages in Ubuntu Gutsy 7.10’s software repositories. I simply searched for “Ubuntu Studio” in Synaptic Package Manager and installed all selected applications and libraries. If you have even a modestly sized hard disk, this should not be a problem. Linux applications don’t suffer from nearly the bloat that plagues Windows applications of similar capability. The real time kernel was automatically included within this search. Reverting to the generic kernel is simply a matter of selecting the desired kernel at boot-up from the GRUB menu. Getting my midi keyboard to work was easy too. I have an Edirol UM-1SX USB midi interface. There was no problem trying to find drivers as Synaptic takes care of all software dependences and contingencies. Rosegarden (the midi sequencer) had no problem utilizing the interface or accessing the features of my keyboard. As a Windows Finale (Coda Software) user, I had no problem making the adjustment. Standard music notation makes any musician welcome to this setup.

If you are a musician or digital artist, give 64 Studio and Ubuntu Studio a look. It’s amazing what you can get for no more than the time and effort spent downloading.

Flex 3

Just got my Adobe developer’s newsletter yesterday. When I upgraded my old trusty PageMaker 6.5 to InDesign CS2 a while back, they must have put me on every mailing list they have. For once I’m glad someone presumed what I might want.

While Microsoft is trying to bamboozle its way into getting OOXML made an ISO standard, Adobe has been busy making sure they have the universal interchangeable document format in PDF and an RIA programming language that could become the de facto standard. With the release of the free Air player for Linux as well as Windows and Mac, they’re covering every possible contingency. With Mozilla on board and Flex 3.0 being released into the Open Source continuum, they are a behemoth when it comes to rich internet applications and content development.

Even thoough I haven’t coded in years, I am intrigued by the possibilities that Flex offers. Adobe has been a force in the content creation industry for years. Flex gives them the means to leverage the content created by their proprietary applications and push those formats into even wider acceptance.

Ubuntu Update—Gutsy Gibbon, Version 7.10

Gutsy Gibbon, Ubuntu 7.10, appears to finally be stable on my computer. The desktop box in question is not cutting edge, but surely must be somewhere in the middle of the technological continuum of computers running this newest incarnation of Ubuntu Linux. A computer with an Athlon 64, Nvidia GeForce FX5500, 160 gb hard drive, with 512 mb of ram installed should not be obsolete, but was made to seem so. Just as I thought Ubuntu was getting too easy, Gutsy came along and shattered that notion

For those of you hoping that Linux could surge into the vacuum created by the shortcomings of Microsoft Vista, don’t hold your breath. Your lungs will implode. Although Ubuntu is oft touted as the easiest Linux, it’s far from perfect. Ubuntu again requires a skilled technician to diagnose and stabilize a problematic installation. The previous version, 7.04, seemed to be more stable and easier to diagnose. There were few fixes this time around.

First of all, the upgrade from Feisty Fawn, 7.04, did not go as planned. It should have gone without a hitch, but Update Manager hung at the point of re-writing the boot sectors for GRUB, the boot manager, to find the new installation, or the old one for that matter. I was left with an unbootable hard disk. Hopefully this has been addressed, but I cannot guarantee that it has. Just make sure any data you want saved has been backed up somewhere before trying to update from Feisty. My solution to the problem was a freshly installing from the Gutsy Live CD, which necessitated re-formatting the boot hard disk.

My second problem is with Gutsy installing Compiz Fusion as part of the default GUI. This is where my Linux box began to look like it wasn’t up to the task of running Ubuntu 7.10. The first thing I noticed is that any games using Open GL wouldn’t work at all. Open GL was non-existent apparently, because the Open GL screensavers installed by default only would give me a blank screen. Ultimately this was resolved by removing Compiz and using the unrestricted driver for the Nvidia graphics card. Unfortunately, advanced features of Compiz Fusion require the use of the restricted drivers. If you haven’t tried to use those features yet, then your workload is cut in half. But revamping of the user interface to adjust the desktop appearance has made turning on those features practically irresistible. It was only after the restricted driver was installed that I learned that my video card still wouldn’t support these so-called advanced features, even after switching out the old Geforce 2 MX 400 and putting in the FX 5500 I had laying around. To say the least, Canonical did not use a user-friendly approach. It was only after several months of trial and error and a multitude of application crashes (everything crashed) that I discerned that going back to the unrestricted video driver was the solution for stability.

So now I have a stable Ubuntu installation. I hope Canonical improves its approach in the future. This release was somewhat delayed as it was, but that seems to be the norm these days. I was considering evaluating a home network server based upon Linux, but the release of Gutsy set my projects back a bit. I’m also recovering from another surgery that restricted my ability to type, but I’m on the mend.

Next time, instead of upgrading Ubuntu, I think I’ll give Debian Etch a try on this dedicated Linux box. I already have it running in MS Virtual PC under Windows XP on my other computer. Stay tuned for details.

If I Have Windows XP, Why Do I Use Linux

This is the uncensored version of what I posted to a long-running thread on the Ubuntu Forum that is paraphrased as this article’s title. It was difficult not bashing Microsoft in the process of responding, but that’s the rule on the Ubuntu Forum, although it’s okay to bash the United States. Ubuntu is more scared of Microsoft then the United States, as they should be, and as you might consider. It is Microsoft’s bad attitude towards end-users, legal or otherwise, that has spawned the interest in Linux for home and small office users.

To start with, let me say this. The only reason I must run Windows XP at all is the necessity of using certain Adobe products to fulfill my customers’ requests, especially in the area of desktop design and publishing. If it was not for that, and my customers would accept my end product as a PDF file, Windows would be gone. I do not dual-boot any computer, by the way. Windows XP is segregated, on it’s own computer, just like a quarantined patient with an incurable infectious disease is in a hospital. I don’t get infected with viruses or bots, or anything else on that box, but you never know. I do take business email from my clients on it.

Now let me tell you what my attraction is to Linux. Let’s assume you wouldn’t be reading this unless you want to learn more about computers, so no offense is directed towards anybody reading this.

Windows has been bloated since the release of Windows 95, to start with, besides all the software that runs on it. If I had raw numbers for you, I’d love to provide them, but the amount of space left for your stuff on a hard drive after a Linux installation, complete with GUI, seems to be a lot greater than after installing any flavor of Windows since 1995.

Secondly, there are very few viruses in the wild to affect Linux/Unix users, and quite frankly I can’t think of a one. Furthermore, Linux users are generally more knowledgeable about their own computers’ operating environments, and take measures to guard against intrusion of any sort. The firewall is up by default after installation in Ubuntu, and many of us are behind NAT firewalls built into routers. There’s not a target painted on our backs because of the lack of precautions or knowledge.

We’re not abused by script-kiddies that know Windows, because that’s what their parents provide for them. We’re not harassed by adware, spyware, botware, trojans, and browser hijackers, because our numbers are too small and disparate to be worth the time of the thieves and miscreants that bombard Windows’ users.

When we install applications, like media players (Apple?) and pdf viewers (Adobe?) and other useful software, they do not try to steal processor time and ram at boot-up so they supposedly load faster when they are needed. Now that’s a joke and a real load of [expletive deleted]! They’re probably just spying on you like everybody else tries to do. It’s amazing how arrogant some Windows software vendors are, as if their software is the only thing that’s ever going to run on your computer(s).

It’s just one irritant after another with Windows. General internet access is one reason I use Linux. Secondly there is the fact that there’s no need to use Windows for everyday, run-of-the-mill tasks that nearly all computer users do. This blog gets updated and edited in Linux. Everything I need for this can be run in Linux. And there are many Windows programs that will run under the WINE, which is a compatibility layer for Windows applications in Linux. Thus Linux serves as virtually impenetrable layer of protection against a multitude of plagues and invaders that Windows Users must deal with.

The third reason I use Linux is that I would like a final and permanent solution from ever having to use Microsoft’s operating systems at all anymore. Steve Ballmer and his rants has finally pushed me over the edge. Microsoft has no respect for the everyday home customer in the least. They believe you are stealing from them before you’ve done anything with their software anymore. They built their empire on the backs of hardware builders like Gateway, Dell, and others, as well as end-users like me who like to build our own computers. They’ve taken one step in the right direction by officially recognizing people like me as OEMs, but it’s too little, too late.

They craftily bamboozled their way into ownership of DOS to begin with. First Digital Research Inc. and founder Gary Kildall, who were in the process of converting Z-80/8080 CP/M code to run on the 8088/8086 Intel architecture, botched a meeting with IBM executives because Kildall “wanted to go flying” instead. Then Bill Gates bought a version of DOS, QDOS, that was being “cloned” from Digital Research’s CP/M 2.2, by a fellow named Tim Paterson, for $50,000, and a job at Microsoft to continue his work. “Legalities aside, Microsoft’s original DOS was based in part on Kildall’s CP/M.” Supposedly the deal, originally to be with DRI, included a non-disclosure agreement, which was the deal breaker with Kildall. So after making a windfall profit to provide DOS to IBM for IBM’s first personal computers, Microsoft took virtually the same OS and released it, virtually giving it away for a time, as a competitor to PC-DOS to IBM-clone makers under the name MS-DOS. And then they have the nerve to talk about intellectual property. We won’t even broach the subject of the theft of the GUI from Xerox. Apple at least licensed the concept first from Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center.

So, there you have it. This is why I support Linux, and open source software in general. It creates at the very least a baseline of what commercial products must do to be considered worthy of your money. So from that view point, it actually pays to know what’s available in the open source world. And most of the time, I have to say I’m very impressed with what’s out there. And you’ll never encounter buyer’s remorse. The upside is control. You can build your very own computer from components of your choice, making the trade-offs of strengths and weaknesses tailored to your needs and budget if you wish, or buy a system from Dell with Ubuntu already loaded and ready to go. Once you’ve learned Linux, you can tweak source code to your heart’s content, or actually contribute to building the software you want. It’s all up to you.

Great Tip For Vista Upgrade Owners

It’s been a long time since I’ve even thought about putting a new article here, as I’ve been a bit tied up with personal health issues. What computer time I’ve had has been spent getting support for my health issues as well as getting and providing support for Ubuntu Linux users at the official support site, Ubuntu Forums.

Several days ago, a user wanted to wipe his hard disk drive and re-install Windows Vista. The trouble was, he no longer seemed to be able to locate his Windows XP install CD, and only had the upgrade CD handy. Here’s a method that allows you to re-install from the Vista Upgrade CD to a blank hard disk drive. The original author, an ex-Microsoft support employee, wishes to remain anonymous for reasons that will be apparent as you read the rest of this post.

I have nothing to add or subtract, or make any editorial remark other than to state the following disclaimers.

I, D. J. Chandler, and the original anonymous author, have no wish for, nor do we support, anyone using this information in a manner that could be construed as illegal, or in any way a violation of the copyright or intellectual property rights of Microsoft Corporation. The following information is provided as is, and I and the original author are in no way responsible for its misuse or damages that could occur because of its use and/or misuse. Support for problems appears in the body of the following information. Please do not make posts for support to this blog, as they will be ignored. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first time for this information to be made public in a distributable form. The following is not my intellectual property, and may be reprinted and distributed under the Creative Commons License at the bottom of the article. Please include this license anytime this work is re-published, in any way, shape, or form. Derivative works are unrestricted otherwise.

Great Tip For Vista Upgrade Owners

When Vista first loads up, you’re going to see a big box, and it has the button you want in the middle, the one that says “Install Now”. Click that.

Next up, it comes up with a screen that says “Enter your product key for activation”, with an example sticker, and a blank box that will allow you to type your product key. We don’t want to do this just yet, so uncheck the box below that which says “Automatically activate windows when I’m online”, make sure the box is blank, and click next in the bottom right hand corner.

It’s going to say “Do you want to enter your product key now” and give a reason why you should, including the fact that IF you do not, you may have to reinstall.

Click “No”.

Select the edition of Windows Vista you have purchased, (in this example I will use Home Premium), and click the box in the bottom right hand corner that says “I have selected the edition of Windows Vista that I purchased”.

**NOTE**: It is important to never select HomeBasicN, BusinessN, or Starter.
None of these products are available in North America, and will REQUIRE you to reinstall your OS, as you won’t have a product key and/or way of activating it without the key. HomeBasicN and BusinessN are only available in Europe due to AntiTrust laws (Windows Media Player and DRM, look it up if you want more info), and Vista Starter is for developing nations (it has less features than Home Basic).

Click Next.

It will ask you if you accept the terms of the License agreement (only installable on one partition of one computer legally, includes refund/warranty information as well.

If you accept click the check-box which says “I accept the license terms”, and then Click Next.

For our first install, click “Custom (advanced) on this screen, as the Upgrade option should be grayed out.

Then the list of hard drives/partitions will show up as to what is available for you to install upon. Click the drive you wish to install it on (it will also provide advanced, but easy to follow options if you wish to delete/format or create a new partition. When you’re done, click next, and it will go through the install.

Upon first boot, remove the dvd, and restart.

**Post Clean-Install**

Upon the desktop loading, insert the Vista disc, and click “run setup.exe”.

It will ask you for your permission to run an identified program, click “Allow”.

Click “Install now”.

it will ask you if you wish to get the latest security updates before installation, you can choose whichever you prefer, but an active internet connection is required for the updates options.

At this point, it will request that you put in your product key, and put it in this time.

**Product Key Info**

A product key is on a sticker with your Vista disc, and is 25 characters alpha-numeric (letters and numbers). The following characters are not found in product keys: A, E, I, O, U, L, S, Z, N, 1, 5, 0.

The most commonly confused characters are B’s (as in Bravo) & 8’s, and D’s (as in Delta) and Q’s (as in Québec).

**End Product Key Info**

Once you have entered your product key (it will put the dashes in for you, it’s at least courteous), you can choose to have it activate Vista for you upon connection to the internet. Then click next, and it will go about the “upgrade”.

Upon boot into the OS again, you should be able to activate without having installed XP.

**NOTES**

1. This walkthrough was made by a former MS employee, who is now wishing to be anonymous. If you find any major faults (I’m thinking mostly in what is and is not in product keys), I blame it on brainwashing, and the fact that it’s been a while since I worked there

2. Was before a lot of updates happened, so this hasn’t been tested on a fully updated version of Vista, as I refuse to have it on this (Ubuntu Linux) computer except as a Virtual Machine, so it would be ideal to do it before updating, also Vista SP1 may fix this as well, I’m expecting it will.

3. Any feedback (positive or negative) can be sent to
upgradewithoutxp (at) gmail (dot) com.

Great Tip For Vista Upgrade Owners is licensed under a
Creative Commons Public Domain License.

Not Swapping a Motherboard in XP

Well, the dust has settled here after the attempt to swap a motherboard in a computer running Windows XP. After doing my research, realizing that I was not only the end user, but also an OEM, I had rights under Microsoft’s End User License Agreement to perform an upgrade on my wife’s computer. Her copy of Windows XP Home was purchased from a well known local retailer at the same time I purchased a new hard disk for her computer. She needed to be able to run Office 2003, as that was what was being rolled out at her office. Besides bringing work home occasionally, she was also certified as a Microsoft Office User Specialist in 2001. That being on her resumé when she got her current job compelled her to try to stay up to date with Office 2003. Besides that fact, under a special licensing agreement with Microsoft, she was able to purchase a copy of the software through her office at a considerable discount.

To help her stay up to date in the event Vista for Business and Office 2007 should become a new standard in her office, I knew she would need an upgrade to her processor, which was going to mean a motherboard swap as well. Just because I had the case open, I decided that doubling from 80 gigabytes to a 160 gigabyte hard drive might be a good idea too. After reading the RU LEGAL website and other research, I determined I was on firm ground as far as the EULA was concerned.

Anybody who has done a motherboard swap since the introduction of Windows 95 knows the best practice is to completely reinstall the operating system. But according to the EULA, because I was going to change out the hard drive as well, it was imperative that I duplicate the contents of her old hard drive in entirety to the new hard drive.

This should have been done before the motherboard swap, and would have been the best course of action, except for the fact that bios doesn’t support hard disks over 137 gigabytes. Essentially the lesson learned is this:

Do one of these things at a time. Changing a motherboard and the hard disk at the same time resulted in the most confusing and exasperating mess I have ever been involved with since I accidently broke traces to memory banks on a motherboard upgrading a video card in a stubborn ISA slot some 15 years ago. That was even before the vesa local bus for video cards was available, which was a very short term standard, if you can even call it that. There are a lot of people out there that can’t remember anything before the advent of the PCI bus, which by most standards, is ancient. PCI bus has been around for over ten years, as long as Intel’s Pentium brand named processors have been around. I’m not sure exactly how many builds and upgrades I’ve done since then, but I’m one of those geeks that won’t put the case side panels back on my computer, because I know before the end of the week, I’ll be back inside that box doing something to tweak a little more performance from a box. And room size box fans make great system cooling devices.

I finally put the old motherboard and hard disk back together with the rest of my wife’s computer and gave up one her upgrade for now. She’s still happy, and that is all that matters in the long run. What was supposed to be part of her early birthday present has now replaced the P III, Asus P2B motherboard, and 20 gigabyte hard drive I was running Ubuntu on. So now I’m running Ubuntu on an Athlon 64 with that basic PC Chips motherboard and the spare 160 gigabyte extra hard drive that I had laying around. I’ve put a TV tuner in it, and MythTV is my next Ubuntu. project. I’ll be back soon with an assessment of MythTV. I have two different commercial, i.e., proprietary, Beyond TV and Pinnacle Systems, applications against which to judge it. Ubuntu 7.04 is ready for convergence at my house, and running FOSS software!

Building Computers, Cheap

There’s a new cpu coming in today, but the UPS guy hasn’t arrived yet, so I decided to bring the blog up to date. There’s not a whole lot new going on. Dell is really selling computers with Ubuntu and the Ubuntu Forums are picking up a lot of new members, so I’ve been spending lots of time helping the newbies starting out for the first time with Linux.

My wife’s computer is getting a “new” build. It’s not going to be entirely new, but it’s probably time to make sure she’s ready for Vista. Roberta, my wife, is a certified Microsoft Office User Specialist, or MOUS. It’s probably only a matter of time that the IT department has to make way for Office 2007, which means they will have to roll out Vista for Business as well, reluctant though they may be. One of her perks is getting a copy of MS Office to install on her home computer. She’s not in the IT department, but the IT guys lean on her heavily to help others in her office with MS Office issues, so it’s mandatory that her computer is ready for Vista and Office 2007 fairly soon. My last hand-me-down won’t do for Vista, but it will be great for Ubuntu Feisty Fawn. A 1.3 ghz cpu will be a huge improvement over the 550 mhz PIII I’m using now, and I’ll have a full gigabyte of ram as I’ll be able to recycle some of the ram from the PIII box.

PC means personal computer. To me, that means nobody should have to share their computer with anybody, just like you shouldn’t have to share your underwear drawer with anybody. It’s for your stuff, and you should have it set up just the way you like it. So, she ’s getting a motherboard with onboard graphics, sound, and networking I picked up in the returns area at MicroCenter, the CPU from this computer, an Athlon 64, because I get the new faster one that I got at a huge discount that only just arrived from Newegg via UPS, and some new PC 3200 ram I got at MicroCenter. They had a rebate thing going on, so she’s getting the 512 mb of ram I bought last Sunday for $24.99 after the rebate. That’s all she really needs, and I believe in doing things a bit cheaply, but not too cheap. My method is to wait for the really new stuff to come out, and buy the stuff they are trying to get rid of at deep discount, but hardware that has already stood up to the beatings the bleeding edgers give it. You still end up with something that will keep up with the new operating systems and office software, but neither one of us needs to be on the leading edge, let alone the bleeding edge, of technology. At 55 and 49 years of age, we’re not big game players. We just want to be able to do our work on the platform our offices need us to work with. I telecommute, hence my huge amounts of free time, plus I do all my work at home. I can still get away with using Office 2000, but I need to run Adobe InDesign and other graphics software and have tons of high quality fonts for the design aspects of the work I do. So I need the greater speed due to the graphics, video, and presentations I work with. She brings work home occasionally, usually to work on a .NET routine to automate some process in her department. It’s a lot easier to think about stuff like that when you’re not being interrupted with questions every couple of minutes about MS Excel or Word. So we each have our own computers.

I highly recommend this to every family, even if somebody has to settle for something a little older and slower. The adults can usually get by with the older stuff. If monitoring children is a problem, just don’t let them have computers in their bedroom or some out of the way part of the house. Make them use the computer where you can watch, and whatever you do, never let them get administrative privileges unless they’ve earned your full trust. Another thing is that if the kids know you’ll inherit their computer in a year or two, they’ll need to be more careful about what they do with their computers. We can talk about networking, recovering data and snooping in browsing histories some other time.

Right know, it’s time to break out the toolkit! Fun, fun, fun, at least for this geeky guy.