Pile of Dross

as a venting; if I don’t direct my anger, irritation and frustration into some other channel, there’s a very good chance I’ll put my fist through my computer screen. And that wouldn’t be good - its new, shiny and undeserving, and it would just be the modern equivalent of shooting the messenger.

No, my wrath is directed at Nvidia and Microsoft. I bought 2 750GB hard disks with the intention of installing them in my desktop in a RAID-1 (mirrored) configuration, putting them in was a doddle, less hassle than I that it would have been, as it turned out that I did have a Molex-SATA power adaptor, rather than having to venture out into the rain to buy one, Installing them into a mirrored array was, again, easy, a simple text-based interface.
Then I booted Windows.

Oh dear. Its fair to say that I had been lulled into a false sense of security by how easy things had been so far - Windows was about to change all that. Things started off well - assorted popups mentioned Raid devices, then I tried to install the drivers. “Oh no, these aren’t WHQL certified drivers, the ensuing apocalypse would be entirely your fault, should you install and use them” or words to that effect appearred on the screen. “Hummmm, suppose I should update them” I thought and merrily toddled off to Nvidia’s website to download the latest driver - version 15.22. A couple of reboots later and ….. nothing ….. no array, two seperate disks, happily reporting in but no array to be seen of and no sign of those Raid devices previously mentioned. Eyes narrowing suspiscously, I started investigating, attempting to trick it into working by installing Raid devices didn’t work nor did removing the array and re-adding it. Having run out of ideas, I decided to install the downloaded drivers again, just in case something hadn’t work properly the first time, so off I went and reinstalled and the re…

Bo**o***….. nv_i’m_allegedly_critical_and_you’ve_just_removed_me.sys is missing or corrupt windows cannot boot, press r from the window setup disk to repair. Wondering such idle thoughts as “What wazzock writes their uninstall software to allow critical drivers to be uninstalled?” and “Doesn’t windows have backups of these things, why can’t it just use those?”, I reached for my laptop, and my Genuine Windows XP DVD. Having found one site that contained non-working link to the, I found another which said that merely running disable would work. And it did! Windows booted, albeit in low resolution graphics mode , and suddenly found lots of new (old) hardware, like the hard disk it had just booted off of. Eyebrow slightly cocked at that, I proceeded to install the new drivers, and this time windows didn’t fall over. Still no arrays, but at this stage any victory no matter how small felt good. By this time several hours had passed and my mood was getting markedly worse. Playing a (paranoid) hunch I checked Nvidia website again for latest drivers, but this time for US ones rather than International versions. This brought up a completely different (much older) version - 6.68 that was specfically for my motherboard chipset. Working on the hypothesis that Nvidia had ballsed something with the RAID support in the up to date generic driver bundle, I download it and installed it and with bated breath, rebooted….

“The hardware on this system has changed a lot since Windows was validated, it needs to be validated again”

W T F ??!??!!?!

After starting at my monitor to convince myself I wasn’t actually hallucinating, begrudgingly and with forced politeness, I agreed that I would like to validate now. Only to be told that

“Windows Activation couldn’t access the internet.”

“Huh, may be because we’re in some sort of weird half logged in, half not, limbo?” I wondered and quit it and continued logging in, to find that Genuine Advantage Notification really wanted me to know that I had 3 days to validate myself. Grumbing more openly now I double clicked its system tray icon and it fired up Firefox to go the Microsoft Genuine Advantage site

“This won’t end well” I thought, but it asked me to download a plugin, which then allowed me to go to another page which told me that I could find the Validate Windows application in my Start menu. Okay tha……, hang on I’ve gone to a web page and installed a plugin to go to another web page which tells me its on the bl**dy START MENU!!??! Why couldn’t I just go there in the first place? Wishing dark and unspeakably violent fates to befall the Microsoft web developers, I ran the application.

“Windows Activation couldn’t access the internet.”

Oh FFS, but it threw up a Zonealarm alert this time. Yes, you may access the internet.

“Windows Activation couldn’t access the internet.”

Ob sod this, I’m sure I saw a online validation BETA link on one of those web pages. Trying with firefo was not successful - I had to download another plugin, but it complained it couldn’t load images. Internet Explorer , after thanking me for downloading it - you were a sodding windows update I didn’t have much choice in the matter - seem to be *thinking* really hard about the web page, but eventually on the third try did manage to validate my copy of windows.

Breathing a sigh of exasperated relief, I tried to recall what I’d being doing before all this palaver. Reinstalling drivers, right. My finger took me to the Disk Management application, which was only showing one new disk, alarmed but not, by this stage, particularly suprised I clicked on it to see which of the two it was, only to discover (hallelujah) that it was the array, windows had sneakily discovered it without telling me, looking at Device Manager, all the SATA controllers were now showing up as SATA Raid controllers. Success!! At last and it only took 7 hours - 9:15 when the box turned up until 4pm.

Lessons learnt:

• Software sucks
• In 75 minutes, you can write a 1000 word blog post, and fully cook a lamb joint, but only format 70% of a 750GB Raid 1 array
• Software sucks

CERN Document Server: Record#1103616: CCRC08 - View from Sites

Comedy starts about 17:20, and lasts for about 10 minutes IIRC when I scuttle back to my chair. At least you can’t see me. Still, I can now say I’ve stood on the same stage as Nobel prize winners and given a presentation in the main CERN auditorium - as two of my managers told me later on.

My hot water heater is fine now, someone can round to look at it.

[Alright I'm playing with MarsEdit to see what its like as a blog posting tool.]

So I think my iBook may be having hardware issues, Leopard installs dumped out at various points. After reboots its had difficulty finding the airport and the sound device from time to time, and I’m pretty sure that some of the sizes reported by files are wrong (Anyone else’s /Library/iTunes/iTunes Plug-ins/Quartz Composer Visualiser.bundle/Contents/MacOS/Quart Composer Visualizer ~150GB in size?).

My XBox 360 has been locking up on occasion.

And my hot water tank appears to have sprung a leak.

Bah.

At the forge,
originally uploaded by drossy.

My brother married his fiance Caity last week - the ceremony was on Thursday, reception on Saturday, with some poor undeserving sod getting the best man duties (anyone keen to see the transcript of the speech from my index cards will be disappointed to learn that they were pressed into service to write down drinks orders and I don’t have the full set anymore). The speech itself seemed to go down okay, but I was conscious of going a touch too fast - obviously I’d not had enough alcohol to relax me. Still Colin referred to it as ‘cheeky’ so it obviously hit near the right note.

I’ve uploaded some photos to my flickr account. Some of them didn’t come out as well as I’d hoped - they’re rather blurry; which I’m going to attribute to the cold, wet windy conditions after the ceremony.

So yes, I’m still alive despite not having written anything here for 3 months.

So what have I been up to? Not a huge amount really. I spent a week in CERN at a conference in January but other than that have just been kicking around Didcot.

I have finally succumbed to temptation and bought myself a new tv - a Philips 32″ LCD HDTV (32pf9731d/10) which cost *mumble* quid and its very very nice.

March is shaping up to be a very hectic month for various reasons

[GIGO] has fallen out of use as programs have become more sophisticated and now usually have checks built in to reject improper input.

Hahahahaha.
Haha.
Hah.

*sigh* If only.

Twitter / Graeme Mathieson: Pubs have jukeboxes. Pubs …

Oh dear god no. Nononononononononono.

How many laptops would end up with pints of beer dumped unceremoniously into them to stop the pain?

Also, it’d probably a dodgy area legally - the tracks from someone’s laptop probably haven’t been licensed for public performance.

Well that wasn’t a fun e-mail to write. I feel like a complete shit now. :-(

You look out of the window and exclaim that those clouds look very dark and ominous - only to realise its a mountain range.

Yes, I’ve made it to CERN safe and sound. It only took 1 hour to get to Heathrow from Didcot - I’m sure its taken 90 minutes previous times. Got pulled out for an x-ray scan as well, but other than got through the security checks without too much hassle, and then spent the best part of 2 hours wandering Terminal 4.

Plane left on time, and arrived on time, though the buses in Geneva had changed where they stopped from the last time I was here. Got pass for site, but I think something has got confused somewhere as I’m not sure its the correct one, but I’m only here for one night so probably won’t be a huge problem. I’m in building 39, rather than building 38 which I’ve been in all other times, so I’ve actually got wireless access in my room this time.