System

Yes, you CAN try Google Chrome OS today!

David Vidmar — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 21:13:02 GMT

If you go to gdgt you can download compiled version of Chrome OS pre-release in shape of virtual machine.

Don’t expect too much, since it’s quite unstable, slow and it freezes a lot. If I didn’t miss anything it’s just Chrome browser that boots on it’s own. So, it’s far from XP/Vista/7 killer for now.

So what would you rather do? Read more about Crome OS or try for yourself?

Here are quick instructions for running Chrome OS in VirtualBox:

Download and install VirtualBox or upgrade to latest version if you have it installed. If you have VMware, even better.
Download Chrome OS VMware image (don’t bother with VirtualBox image, it doesn’t work for many and it didn’t work for me).
Create new machine and

attach existing VMDK image as primary hard drive,
give it 1 GB of RAM,
leave network as it is (NAT),
give video card more RAM, I simply went with max - 128 MB.

Boot it! It should be up in seconds.
Login with Google Account.

If you get “wrong password” error message, remember that you have US keyboard!
If you get “no network” error message, turn network off/on, reboot and it will eventually start working.

Free copy of Windows 7 Ultimate

David Vidmar — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 18:18:22 GMT

I was pleasantly surprised today, when I found out I’m eligible for free copy of Windows 7 Ultimate as a beta tester.

Although I didn’t report any bugs, I was granted a retail license key and a download of x86 and x64 version of Windows 7.

That’s just great! Thank you, Microsoft!

After installing Windows 7 of my wife’s laptop and couple machine at work, I’m more than convinced that Microsoft did few things right and Windows 7 will be a great system for years to come. I’ll repave my main home machine in couple of days.

Windows 7 RTM on MSDN/TechNet

David Vidmar — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 17:33:18 GMT

Gentlemen, start you downloads! Windows 7 RTM is available for download on MSDN and TechNet.

I haven’t seen Windows Server 2008 R2 yet.

The best new feature in Windows 7

David Vidmar — Mon, 11 May 2009 23:09:40 GMT

I just installed Windows 7 RC in Virtual PC and found that Windows 7 has a keyboard shortcut for creating new folder. Just press CTRL + SHIFT + N and you got it! Finally!

This alone will be the reason I’ll install Windows 7 as soon as it RTM’s!

Windows Home Server available on MSDN

David Vidmar — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 10:53:30 GMT

Since today, Windows Home Server is available for download for MSDN subscribers. The main goal is to “ncrease awareness of Windows Home Server with a larger community of professional developers and help further grow the ecosystem of software applications built for Windows Home Server”.

For more info, jump to Windows Homer Server Blog.

On the same not Power Pack 2 is now available. Download via Windows Update. Philip has more info.

Windows Home Server 2.0

David Vidmar — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 22:53:52 GMT

My good old home server died. This 7 years old machine that I stacked with hard drives was happily running Windows Home Server and few more things on the top for little more than a year.

But just last week some capacitors on main board blew and it was time to find a substitute.

I quickly decided I need brand new machine I could trust. This were requirements for components:

Case with enough space for 3.5” drives that can be mounted without screws, can be ugly, nobody will see it.
Low energy consumption CPU, possibly dual core for extra power for occasionally building of my software, network video rendering and some light web hosting-
Motherboard with onboard graphics card and gigabit Ethernet, since I rewired home network with gigabit lan (man, it flies!).
Heat and loudness is not something I’m concerned about, since machine will be in the basement - far from anyone to hear it and where is cold enough.
2 GB RAM so I can start extra virtual machine if needed-
1 TB of disk space to add to my current ~2 TB array of drives-
Cheap.
On stock.

This is what I came up with:

Case: Cooler Master Elite RC-331 – 31.90 EUR

Simple and cheap, but with quite intelligent system for locking drives.

Power Supply Unit: be quite! Straight power 350W – 41.90 EUR

It’s rated “80 plus”, has lots of power cables for drives and I don’t need anything more than 300W.

Motherboard: ASUS M3N78 motherboard – 62.90 EUR

Probably little over the top, but I it was on sale.

CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 5050e – 59.90 EUR

As suggested by coworker, low consumption, more than enough performance.

RAM: 2x1GB Kingston ValueRAM DDR2-800 – 30.20 EUR

Trustworthy brand, but cheap-

Hard drive: Western Digital Caviar 1TB – 89.90 EUR

What a price for 1 TB of space! I want more! :)

Cooling: none

Stock fan that came with CPU, no need for anything more.

Optical drive: none

I’ll just pull SATA DVD-ROM from my main machine to do install, from then on I don’t need it.

Total cost: ~320 EUR

I’ll add 2 x 500GB WD and 2 x 240 WD ATA drives joined in RAID0 on FastTrack TX2000 controller from old machine and drop other smaller disks.

I’ll reuse Windows Home Server OEM from old machine.

Update: It’s up and running. I’ll move data from old drives over the night and it’s all set!

Windows Home Server – This computer cannot connect to you home server.

David Vidmar — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 20:42:09 GMT

If you get this error when trying to connect to your Home Server using Windows Home Server Console, welcome to the club.

When Googling you’ll find all kinds of advices to reinstall Connector software or even whole server. Luckily, all of those are wrong.

It turns out that all other components, like shared folder and backup connect to server using NETBIOS, but Console is using DNS resolution.

Sometimes (!) that resolves to server.your-isp.net or similar.

Solution? Stick servers IP in hosts, and restart!

Dual booting Windows Server 2008 and Windows XP

David Vidmar — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 07:45:18 GMT

There are lots of instructions out there on how to dual-boot Windows Vista and Windows XP, but if you chose Windows Server 2008 as a OS of choice, things are a bit different. To simplify things for following installations of this kind, here are my notes.

Install Windows Server 2008 and leave some free space for Windows XP partition
or
Make room for Windows XP.
Install Windows XP
Boot into Windows Server 2008 installation DVD
Run command prompt and fix Vista's boot records
C:
cd \boot
bootsect /nt60 c: /force
bootrec /rebuildbcd
(trick: "my" copy of Windows Server 2008 64-bit doesn't have bootsect.exe and bootrec.exe in C:\boot, so I had to run above commands from boot folder on DVD!)
Download EaysBCD, add Windows XP, reboot and you're good to go.

Point 4. is where Server 2008 and Vista differ. Painful, but it works.

Three less known features of Windows Vista’s Windows Explorer

David Vidmar — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 21:25:40 GMT

#1 Open Command Window Here

Sure, you had this in XP too, but only if installed Open Command Prompt Here (a.k.a. CmdHere) power toy.

It’s built into Windows Vista , so all you have to do is hold down SHIFT, right click on folder and select Open Command Window Here. Works on Desktop too!

#2 Copy Path

Another feature that you COULD have in Windows XP if you installed extra utility like Ninotech Path Copy. In Vista you us similar trick as in #1, so you hold down SHIFT, right click file, folder or selection of files and folders and then click Copy as Path.

This will file names and paths of al selected items on clipboard for easy pasting in documents, emails and stuff.

#3 Fast renaming of multiple files

There might be some tool to get this feature in previous versions of Windows, but I don’t know any.

If you are in the middle of file or folder rename, you can simply press TAB key to jump to next file. The long way is pressing enter, then down/up and F2 again. So two keystrokes saved!

Note #1: feature when pressing F2 or issuing a rename command only selects filename and not file extension is easily discovered, so that’s why it’s not #4 in this list.

Note #2: if you do serious renaming you definitely need of of many file rename utilities to help you with your job. I totally agree that mentioned feature alone is not good enough.

My Dell laptop is running loud, fan is almost always on full speed

David Vidmar — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 22:11:10 GMT

Lately my Dell Latitude D820 has been running very hot and loud. I tried to help it cool with various desk and lap positions, but things went from bad to worse. Google search confirmed my suspicion that dust has killed it’s cooling capabilities.

I could take it to repairs, but that’s no fun. And since times at Vidmar family are very stressful, what better way to take mind off troubles that some“screwdriver fun!?

First, I ran I8kfan GUI, a free tool to monitor temperature and change fan speed of Dell laptops. My CPU was hot, and speeding or slowing down didn’t do nothing to the temperature. Another proof, that dust is was in the way.

Getting to the fan is not easy, as one has to:

unscrew every screw you find on the bottom and back of the laptop,
remove battery,
remove keyboard,
remove hinge,
remove display.

Luckily Dell provides instructions, so it’s not that hard as it seems. Instructions also tell that you should also remove hard drive, wireless card and RAM, but it’s not true.

After opening my laptop, this is what I found.

This is how it will look after you take your laptop apart (glasses optional).

After cleaning laptop is running 15-20°C cooler than before.

One more piece of advice before doing what I just did – there are three kinds of screws. Black, fat and short for hard drive, silver for display and black and longer for everything else. Keep that in mind when putting machine back together.