Devil Works

It’s day three and so far I’m pretty happy with my move to delete Vista from my laptop and install Ubuntu.

To follow up on the last post

• the screen brightness issue seems to have resolved itself.

• I haven’t fixed the wireless issue yet, but I have found the instructions… I have little motivation when I’m house sitting in a house with no wireless.
•  I realised that while twittering was fun, it didn’t deserve the effort to get tweetdeck working at this stage. I can still use twitter.com if I need a fix.

Some other things I’ve noticed

• Booting up and shutting down are really quick. I used to flick the power button and go and do something else for five minutes while it kicked itself into gear. I’m now patient enough to wait the 30 seconds for Ubuntu to load.
• I tried hibernate mode and it froze. Then I realised that I can shut down and reboot in the time it used to take Vista to wake up from Hibernate. There is also a menu option for Ubuntu to resume where you left off after a log out, but I haven’t tried this yet.
• Some of the keyboard shortcuts are different, but the only one I’m missing at the moment is using the backspace key to go back a page in Firefox
• All the applications open a lot quicker, even when I have 10 Firefox windows to load, it kicks Vista’s ass.
• It comes with more games than any version of Windows I’ve ever had.
• Did I mention it’s so much quicker than Vista

I’ve still got lots more to learn, but almost everything I’ve done so far has been pretty simple once it’s set up. On the other hand, things on Vista are pretty easy to set up but a pain because they never work properly.

Overall I’m pretty impressed, before I installed Ubuntu I may have had a total of 20 hours linux experience and maybe 20 years of Windows experience, so I can’t expect it to be as natural to me as the Microsoft solution.

I really haven’t found a reason to go back !

It was a little bit scary, but after a few Vista related problems in the last few days I’d had enough.

A while ago I figured out that most of the things I do online involve Firefox and with a bit of research it was easy to see that most of the other things could easily be adapted to Ubuntu.

Months ago I’d looked at doing a dual boot set up but due to all the crap that came with Vista I didn’t have enough space on my hard drive.

This afternoon I downloaded the latest version of Ubuntu and burnt it to a CD. One of the great things about Ubuntu is that you can run it from the CD. It ran as fast as Vista did so I thought once I had Ubuntu fully installed then it would be flying….. I wasn’t wrong.

So using Vista I spent 4 hours backing up 6GB of data to a portable drive then deleted Vista from my life forever. I couldn’t go back even if I wanted to, My system didn’t come with restore disks, and I didn’t make any either.

Overall the experience has been pretty good. I’m making this post in Ubuntu without having to do anything special.

So far I’ve come across three minor problems.

1. My laptop screen brightness has dimmed and I can’t find anywhere to adjust it (there is a fix, need to look for it)
2. My wireless networking isn’t working (but I think I know how to fix it)
3. Adobe Air is only an alpha release so Tweetdeck might not be real stable (i’ll look for an alternative)

I’m sure I’ll get all these things sorted within the next few hours.

I’ll post some updates on how things are going.

Update: I just realised that Vista won’t be entirely out of my life until I convince my girlfriend she doesnt need to play World of Warcraft anymore

I’m almost ready to wipe my entire hard drive of Vista and say good bye to it forever.

I was trying to connect to my spare laptop today to transfer some files, when I clicked my network icon Vista reported that network discovery wasn’t turned on. So I click the links to turn it on (even though I never turned it off) and I get an error message “%1 is not a valid application”

I’ve done my usual Google searches and can’t find a solution, though it appears that it’s quite a common problem…. dating back from XP days.

I originally wanted to install Ubuntu on this machine, but didn’t have a big enough partitionto set it up as a dual boot install. I’m thinking that I might throw caution to the wind and backup my files and do a clean install of Ubuntu.

I’ve got a handful of memory sticks (aka USB thumb drives) that said on the package they are ReadyBoost capable. ReadyBoost is a Windows Vista Feature that lets you use a memory stick as extra memory to make your computer run faster.

I hadn’t bothered with using it for a while, but this morning when I inserted the memory stick, and attempted to engage readyboost, Vista reported that the drive wasn’t suitable.

I found this a little unusual as I’d used it in the past for this purpose.

I had a bit of a think, then reformatted the memory stick and like magic it was suitable for ReadyBoost again.

I’d been hanging out for Microsoft to release SP1 for Vista. I’d been having problems with Windows Update for several months and thought this might be the only thing that saves me from wiping the hard drive and doing a full reinstall of Vista.

This is a blow by blow of how I wasted 9 hours of my life keeping my computer up to date.

14.30 I read in a magazine that SP1 would be available via Windows Update from mid April. This wasn’t going to help me as my Windows Update function had been broken for some time. I read a little further into the article and it said SP1 was available now via Microsoft Downloads.

14.35 I head to Microsoft Downloads and discover that the SP1 pack will be 400+ MB as I had no choice but to download the 5 language pack. The windows update version was only around 65MB.

16.50 The download has completed and I start Vista SP1 installing. I get a message on the screen saying it may take more than an hour to install.

17.50 First hour is up, things are progressing but it hasn’t finished installing yet.

18.50 Two hours down, I’ve had dinner now, things are progressing, but still not fully installed.

19.20 The installer reports that it’s 100% and hangs with that message for about 10 minutes, also advising me not to turn the computer off.

19.30 After over two and a half hours I get a message on my screen advising that the SP1 install has been unsuccessful and SP1 is now uninstalling itself.

20.30 SP1 finishes removing itself from my system and reboots. A window pops up and refers me to a Knowledge Base article about SP1 failed installs. I take a look and it offers five different possible fixes for the problem. The one that stands out to me is SP1 requiring a couple of important windows updates having to be installed before SP1 could be installed. I vainly turn my attention to windows update and see if I can convince it get the required updates. This time when I hit the “get updates” button I get a different error code to what I have previously experienced.

The previous error had told me that I needed to follow a bunch of different steps to reinstall Windows Update. I duly followed these steps numerous times and nothing changed, I also spent hours Googling for an answer and still got nowhere.

This new error message leads me to a help file that suggests I have a firewall preventing Vista from accessing the Windows Update server. I have a bit of a think and the only firewall I can think of (other than the internal Vista one) is on my adsl modem/router. I log into the router and disable the firewall, click “get updates” again and after nine months of update errors I discover I have 90+MB of updates needed for my system. So update I do.

21.50 The updates have installed and I initiate the Vista SP1 install again.

23.30 A message pops up on the screen saying that the SP1 installation has been successful. I reactivate the firewall on my router, turn off the computer and go to sleep.

Total elapsed time of 9 hours.

I’m peeved that
A) It took four hours for SP1 to install, work out it shouldn’t be there and uninstall itself.
B) The initial failed installation was most likely as a result of Windows Update not installing the required packages prior to my SP1 upgrade attempt.

C) The SP1 installer should have checked I had the required updates before going through the whole convoluted process.

And the really annoying thing is that I payed Microsoft for the privilege. If I’d bought anything else that had so many faults I’d be demanding a refund.

Unless Microsoft really lift there game I can see myself being a Linux user in the very near future.

(I’m about to have a big whine here, click you back button now if you don’t want to read it)

I think I’ve mention somewhere before that I bought a new laptop with Windows Vista Home Premium Installed. It had a few annoying things that I managed to reconfigure and the problem with slow unzipping that I’ve written about here and here.

Last night I installed a couple of automated updates, Vista said it needed a reboot, so instead I turned it off and went to bed.

When I got back from work tonight I switched it on and got a corrupt file message, Vista refused to boot and told me to insert my Windows disc. Now the problem with that is that this computer didn’t come with a disc. All the files are on the hard drive, but I wasn’t given an option to search the hard drive.

The computer didn’t come with much of a manual either, everything is on the disk.

So after punching a bunch of different buttons, 15 restart attempts later I have accessed the recovery utility that’s on the disc. I’ve got three restore options. I go for the one that restores the windows files (considering it wouldn’t boot I thought that was my best option) The only catch is that it’s a back up I did when I first turned the computer on out of the box. I know, bad habit, my own fault etc, but it shouldn’t have freaking corrupted it’s own file when it updated. Continue Reading »

I posted a while back on my frustrations with the slow file unzip with my new version of Vista Home Premium.

I reckon I spent an hour last night looking at over 200 pages that mention the problem but none of them seem to have a cure.

What I’ve done for now is downloaded the trial version of WinRar. It works a treat and my unzipping occurs as quick as a flash. For example, I downloaded the latest version of Wordpress, using the unzip feature built into Windows Vista it took a slow couple of hours to unzip. Using WinRar it was done in seconds
The only catch is that it’s going to cost me $29 to register after my 40 day free trial is up.

I wonder if I can get Microsoft to reimburse me cause I had to buy something to replace a very defective feature in their OS. I don’t like my chances, but it’s plain rude to charge for something that doesn’t work properly.

What would you do if you bought a new sports car and it would travel more than 10 miles an hour?

I’ve removed Explorer Destroyer from my site.

While I like the idea of giving Micro$oft a good kick in the pants, I did a search of my site in google and all my page descriptions show only the explorer destroyer blurb. I don’t think this is good so I’ve ripped it out.

Now I just have to wait for the big G to crawl my site again.

I just tried to sign up to the microsoft live service and the sign up screen froze my Firefox browser, funny how it worked perfectly in IE.

One of the reason’s I dislike Microsoft is that big business get’s arrogant, so arrogant that they expect that everyone will be using their product and there won’t be compatability problems.

If only I could convince my relatives to use gmail chat, I wouldn’t be stuck using MSN messenger or whatever it’s branded these days.

I think I can use another messenger program to talk with hotmail users, I’ll be giving that a try very soon.

As you may have read here before I’m not a big fan of Microsoft, and I’m looking forward to the day where I can wipe it from my life (at the home office anyway).

I came across Explorer Destroyer today and I’ve installed it on this site. If you’re not using Firefox you will have seen a block at the top of the page encouraging you to download Firefox.

This is good for two reasons

1. Microsoft is Evil and has become blase due to it’s market dominance
2. If someone downloads Firefox from the link I will get a small commission from Google Adsense

I’ve tested it in Firefox, Opera and Explorer and it only shows up in Internet Explorer.

It’s easy to install and there are specific instructions for adding it to Wordpress sites.

Go and join the Explorer Destroyer and earn yourself some cash at the same time.

Update: I forgot to mention that the script you use for this is completely free.

Update 2: I’ve removed Explorer Destroyer from my site as it messed with my listings at google