999 Mis-adventures in computerland. This ain't a hobby. It's a calling.

So. You thought you had it hard? Ever tried to be a computer enthousiast? (Sounds better than 'freak' or 'geek', doesn't it?) Well... here are some of my experiments, experiences, and what not... They just might come in handy, or provide you with a combination of deep insight and a cheap laugh.

So be it. To make things even better, this page goes backwards in time... you'll see what I mean, just scroll down. To the left there's a little more structured TOC in case you are one of *those* :-) Oh, if these were only 'miss-adventures'...

11. XP's long tooth (I hate Windows 7)...
24.03.2011

XP bites the dust, time for Windows 7.

Yeah, I know. XP is long death by now, but I'm still using it. In fact, even Windows 7 is about to be discontinued with Windows 8 on the horizon. Still, most of my machines are still running on XP, and they are running *great*.

So why upgrade?

Some of the software / hardware issues I ran into:

Sometimes finding the right place for a specific option can be hellish! Most things are still in the control panel, just switch off that lousy 'category' view...

Nope, MicroSoft still does not acknowledge the existence of a second monitor. My old license didn't work on the latest version, and upgrading was impossible. Tthanks, UltraSoft, it's possible to upgrade from version 2.0 to 3.x for half price, but to upgrade from 3.0 to 3.1 I have to pay the full price, sigh.

10. Believe in the afterlive!
03.09.2010

Believe in the afterlive! Wether on tape, or disk...

You might have seen that quote somewhere. And you might have lived the consequences.

In an attack of nostalgia I've tried to resurrect the old NightLive BBS, and then discovered one of the disadvantages of progress: nothing keeps working. Of course things can break down (as I'm tracking in my dead list) but things can also become outdated. Do you remember the DOS days, the Iomega ZIP disk, or the QIC80 tapedrive?

If you do' you're probably happy they're all gone :-)

Anyway, when I decided to have a little fun (sort of) rebuilding the BBS I needed to restore my old data. It turned out I accidentally deleted the old .ARJ file containing everything, so I had to restore from other sources as much as I could. In the attic I found back a few tapes, ZIP disks, and floppy disks... and then the fun started.

CPBackup on.

The first challenge where the floppy disks. I seem to have been using Central Point PC Tools, or at least their backup program. (I'm pretty sure I was using Norton Desktop for everything else.) I found a set of four disks containing a copy of the PCTools folder. These disks were created in 1994. CPBackup runs, but unfortunately it doesn't run well on newer hardware. I've been trying it on the oldest hardware I own (a Compaq EN500 Pentium III) but it doesn't recognize floppy swaps.

If you want to contribute hardware to the cause leave me a message :-)

So, this one is still under investigation...

Update. I've recovered some files, but it seems none of the backup sets was complete. I did manage to read in some old QIC80 tapes and found some more data on an old Zip drive. Unfortunately, it looks like I no longer have a complete backup anywhere, and that's a disappointment...

9. Ultimate pain...
14.10.2009

Vista stinks.

... but you already knew :-)

When I bought my current machine (a Dell XPS710) with a huge discount (I'm dutch, what do you expect? :-)) I noticed it came with Windows Vista Ultimate. Not really a problem as I wasn't planning to run it with Vista anyway... still, it was nice to have a valid legal copy of Vista around, especially as I was planning to experiment something in 64 bits using PureBasic, and I didn't expect to be able to run a 64 bit OS as a guest OS in a virtual machine.

I got, however, a little annoyed when I actually tried to install... You see, Dell included a 32 bits version of Windows Vista Ultimate but that's not what I wanted. So first I tried to obtain a 64 bits DVD. You can order one via MicroSoft, but MicroSoft would not accept my valid Vista key... Then I contacted Dell, but they replied that they only included a 32 bits version of Vista Ultimate. Not that this was mentioned on the Dell website at the time, nor did MicroSoft mention anything regarding 'restricted limited' versions of Vista Ultimate. Based on the MicroSoft website Ultimate would allow you to run 32 and / or 64 bits at will.

Darn.

A little digging resulted in one nice little OEM Vista 64 Ultimate DVD. Which installed fine with my old (supposed to be 32 bits only) original Dell Vista Ultimate key. So I could not order a 64 bit install medium, but my Dell 32 bits only key was valid for installing a 64 bit OS? Go figure.

Of course, I was a late adopter of Vista 64. (In fact, I'm not even an adopter at all, as I'm running it in a VM.) So the first thing to download was lots of updates. SP1 and SP2. And after I downloaded and installed SP2 (a very time consuming process on a 64 bit guest OS in a VM, trust me) and finally rebooted there it was: an up-to-date Vista Ultimate 64 bits! Which suddenly told me to activate within two days...

Sigh.

I tried to activate Vista using the same key as I installed with at first, no luck... My key was acceptable to an early Vista 64 Ultimate, but not to an updated version? Geez. Then I decided to do the stupid thing and used the online phone based activation, and lo and behold, that one perfectly accepted my key, returned a bunch of numbers, and everything seems to work.

The above makes me wonder. What will happen in a few years when Vista is no longer around? When MicroSoft kills their online activation option? I feel the lawgivers should step in here. If I buy something it's mine and mine alone. I'm not renting an OS, I am buying it. Honestly, I'm almost starting to sympathize with all those pirates out there. And if Vista asks me one more time for an activation I'm gonna' find and download that crack and patch things up, I've had it with Vista. Good thing I only run it to test 64 bit versions of the code I fool around with, I wonder if I could stand the wonders of Vista any more...

Update. Windows 7 is a lot better.

8. Working from home...
24.10.2008

Working from home is a great concept, but we all know that a (small) laptop screen and keyboard isn't the best thing on earth. Especially if you have two flatscreens and a nice Dell XPS710 on the desk in your study. Or on your kitchen table. Or in the basement, hey, take your pick :-)

Here are some tricks that may make your life easier...

Rightfully yours.

Before you start messing around with your laptop, install additional software etc. make sure you are a. allowed to do so, and b. have suffucient user rights (or c. make sure nobody ever finds out). Make sure your network is working fine, and that all security on all your home PC's is properly set up and up to date. You certainly don't want to infect your company's network! 

Cisco VPN.

Now, the regular IT department will roll out the Cisco VPN solution... In itself a nice solution, but be aware of the following caveats:

1. You may not be able to use any local network resources, such as a local printer or a shared drive. This can have two reasons, a. your IT department has blocked a certain option on the server side (start begging, sliming, or blackmailing), or b. you have disabled the 'Allow Local Lan Access' option. IT departments have a habit of changing options without telling the users, so don't be surprised if something worked fine and then suddenly stops working onde day. It happened to me, and I wasted a lot of time before I found out it wasn't my fault at all...

2. You can't access certain local network resources from your local laptop, but you can ping 'm, and (typically) you cannot ping your laptop from another computer... Ah. Another little Cisco joke. Make sure you disable 'Statefull Firewall Always On'. Took me ages to figure this one out.

3. The Cisco VPN will repeatedly and reproducable crash under heavy load and weird protocols. Microsoft Communicator in combination with a webcam has turned out to be a guaranteed recipe for BSOD's, at least for me and quite a few others. Feel free to drop me a solution if you have one.

Personal firewall.

If you can ping local network devices from your laptop but you cannot access the resources on them, check out your firewall. Did you perhaps disable (Internet) access for the svchost process? In some cases you need to allow svchost access to the internet, or at least that's how it looks like. Svchost does some fancy things in the background, and it just may screw up your access if you don't let it do what it wants to do. Jeez. Why can't networking be easier?

Also, don't forget to add your local network to the trusted zone, or whatever it is called in your firewall.

Synergy.

If you have the deskspace you can put your laptop next to your regular machine, and simply move your mouse pointer 'onto' the laptop screen using Synergy (free) or MaxiVista (not free). You can copy data between the two screens, but you cannot drag windows (obviously).

TightVNC.

... or any other VNC flavour allows you to control your laptop remotely. In some cases it's even preferable over Synergy, as you don't have to move your attention to the (often smaller) laptop screen. You just put your complete laptop screen in a single window and move it out of the way when you don't need it. Obviously you want to use a password and non-standard ports, and keep in mind that this isn't a very secure application at all. (I'd rather not start it automatically, and only when hiding behind a firewall with all proper ports closed.)

Batch files.

The real die-hards could set up their machine in such a way that they, depending on their location, can have all their preferred programs started the moment you switch on your machine. Batch files are a great help here. Here are a few suggestions for the experts:

Check if you're at home, let's say your homeserver resides at 192.168.0.1:

ping -n 1 192.168.0.1
if errorlevel 1 goto not_at_home
goto at_home

ping -n 1 homeserv
if errorlevel 1 goto not_at_home
goto at_home

ipconfig > d:\temp\startup.tmp
find "172.31" d:\temp\startup.tmp
if errorlevel 1 goto at_the_company

skiprun synerg* synergyclient.lnk
skiprun winvnc* c:\software\batch\tightvncserver.lnk
net stop browser
net use /persistent:no
net use \\homepc * /user:admin
net print \\serv1\deskjet520

if exist x:\outlook\outlook.ost goto done
"c:\program files\truecrypt\truecrypt.exe" /v d:\vault.tc /l x /a /q
:done

Update. Here is another example of a batch file used on a netbook. It first tries to ping a machine, then checks its own ip address. When at home it launches the tightvnc server. Following that it checks if the current user is the administrator, and depending on the outcome sets a wallpaper using WallX.

ping -n 1 192.168.0.22
if errorlevel 1 goto not_at_home
ipconfig > d:\temp\startup.tmp
find "192.168.0" d:\temp\startup.tmp
if errorlevel 1 goto not_at_home

:at_home
cd "c:\program files\tightvnc"
start tvnserver.exe
goto continue

:not_at_home
goto continue

:continue
echo %username% > d:\temp\startup.tmp
find "dmin" d:\temp\startup.tmp
if errorlevel 1 goto not_as_admin

:as_admin
start c:\software\wallpaper\wallx.exe traffic text ADMINISTRATOR fade resident
if exist v:\prive goto done
"c:\program files\truecrypt\truecrypt.exe" /v d:\vault.tc /l v /a /q
goto done

:not_as_admin
start C:\software\wallpaper\wallx.exe random nearby transparent mark NETBOOK1 resident renew 3000 nouser 600
goto done

:done
 

7. Our collection of lemons expands...
17.01.2007

Compaq Presario S3250NL.

What a horror! Got my hands on this older machine, featuring an XP2000 CPU IIRC, and I said to myself: let's replace that aging P3-500 that is my gateway / mailsstation... Or so I thought.

So, I bought some new memory, plugged it in, did some reinstalls and enjoyed the massive increase in speed. Until I decided to copy some large stuff (anime, if you want to know)... Then it turned out this machine is just another lemon.

Why? Well, without any specific reason (and yes, I flashed the BIOS, downloaded the proper drivers, tried XP as well as Win2K, even installed a separate network card) it looses all network connectivity on heavy load. Which just doesn't make sense, but that is what happens. If you have a clue, tell me, because I have given up.

I even feel pretty bad about buying some RAM for this machine, but okay, I still have an Asrock XP board laying around that should become part of my Mame project some day, so perhaps.

Update! Problem solved! And perfectly illogical... Imagine, the whole machine worked flawlessly, passed all tests, memory wise, harddisk wise, etc. etc. Yet the problem with the network as described above persisted, regardless of using the on-board network connection or an additional network card. Yet the actual solution defies all logic...

A new powersupply.

Again? Yes. A new powersupply. Again. A new powersupply. I still cannot believe it...

More Asus K8N-E...

I've had my share of troubles with this board, and if I had known how wacky the NForce3 chipset was...

Anyway, this board has a SIL3114 RAID chipset onboard. After my failing experiments with RAID (it being actually slower than regular single drives) I decided to stick to a single drive Raptor. And so, for a while, my machine had three drives, a SATA WD740 Raptor, another 200 GB SATA drive, and an aging 120 GB IDE.

Then the IDE drive died. Oh my.

Now you have to understand that the K8N-E has 6 SATA ports, two connected to the NForce3 chipset, and 4 to the SIL3114. I could never get those SIL3114 connectors to work properly in RAID mode, and could never boot from them at all. So I had given up on them up until now. Time for a rematch.

I'm still not sure who to blame, the mainboard or the SIL3114 itself, but there is some funny behaviour going on, and I had to experiment with all the settings to get things to work. You see, it doesn't make sense.

In the mainboard BIOS there are TWO opptions related to the SIL3114. One is to enable the chipset, the other one is to enable it's RAID functionality. Of course, the manual that came with the board doesn't explain them. Then there are a whole load of drivers for the SIL3114, of which there are a few that are supposed to deliver RAID functionality whilst some others are supposed to give you additional single SATA drives. Again, poorly documented, as usual.

Here's what I had to do in the end:

- Enable the SIL3114 chipset in the mainboard BIOS. Well, this does make sense, doesn't it?

- Enable the SIL3114 RAID BIOS in the mainboard BIOS. This is the one crucial step that is nowhere listed and just doesn't make sense. Why would I enable a RAID BIOS if I'm not planning to use RAID? This had me running around in circles for a while. With this option enabled the drives become suddenly visible...

- DO NOT configure the drives inside the SIL RAID BIOS. All you can do is make them part of a RAID set, and that's not what I was after.

- Install SIL3114 driver software in Windows. I'm not so sure about this step anymore, as I've been playing around with it too much. It looks like you DON'T need the 'driver disk' during Windows boot-up, but you must install something. I used the original SATA controller software from the SIL website, but I am under the impression Windows can handle it without that driver. I'm probably going to find out during the next re-install :-(

And tada! Windows sees the drives. So does the mainboard BIOS. And suddenly I am allowed to select them as a bootable device (which, by the way, doesn't work reliable so I still start from the NForce SATA drives). In the device manager the SIL controller is listed as a SCSI device, which surprised me a little, but who cares. It works :-) One thing is strange though, upon detection of the new drives Windows wants to convert them to dynamic disks, I didn't want that, so a cancel and some disk management later I had two spankin' new SATA drives. And they were just as fast as the NForce3 connected drives, which a. makes me wonder about the efficiency of that NForce3 chipset, and b. puzzles me even more why RAID was so horrible slow using the SIL3114. Oh well...

The end result: now I got 4 drives in this machine, one Raptor WD740 (my 10k bootup drive), another 200GB Western Digital SATA drive on the NForce3 (my temp and projects drive), another 250GB Seagate on the SIL (files, data, Mame, and other important :-) stuff) and finally another 200GB Seagate for, well, stuff I downloaded. That's 700GB which is, I admit, a little silly.

A good thing I have two connectors left for just two more drives... ;-)

6. Mix'n'match USB is a bad thing. Is it?
09.07.2006

... or so they say. And we all believe it. But, here comes the key question: did you try? Well, I painfully tried to seperate USB 1.1 low, full, and USB 2.0 high speed devices. And found out it did not matter on my machine...

What DID matter is using USB 2.0 devices though!

Here's my collection:

• Asus K8N-E Deluxe (horrible mainboard) with AMD64 3000
• Targus PAUH212 7 ports hub (2.0 high )
• Safeway 4 ports hub (1.1 full)
• Logitech mouse (1.1 slow)
• Hercules (Contour) ShuttlePro jog dial controller (1.1 slow)
• Trust (Aiptek) 1200 A3 touchpad (1.1 slow)
• brandless 32 Mb USB stick (a Raritan promo, 1.1 full)
• FreeCom 64 Mb USB stick (2.0 high)
• brandless 128 Mb USB Stick (an Interoute promo, Feiya technologies, 1.1 full)
• TrekStor 512 Mb USB stick (2.0 high)
• Logitech Quickcam Express (1.1 full)
• Manhatten 3.5" HDD external casing (Cyprus technologies, a bit el cheapo, 2.0 high)
• Iomega external HDD (sorry, forgot the type, 2.0 high anyway)
• SpeedLink (C-media) USB sound dongle (supposed to be 2.0 but is 1.1 full)
• Logitech Rumblepads (different models)

The facts.

Let's start with a number of things that you should know about USB:

1. all speeds claimed are theoretical maxima, forget about them
2. USB 1.0, 1.1 and 2.0 are supposed to be upwards compatible
3. low speed < full speed < high speed
4. USB 2.0 devices MIGHT operate at high speed but they don't always do
5. it's very hard to figure out the specs without checking the manual

The conclusion.

Let's do the conclusion first :-) so you can skip the rest... Oh, these conclusions were based upon the materials I had laying around, so you may come to a different conclusion... feel free to drop me a note!

• mixing 1.1 and 2.0 devices on the same 2.0 hub may work fine!

• don't use USB 1.1 hubs
• USB memory sticks may feel fast but USB harddisks are still twice as fast
• get fast USB 2.0 high speed sticks! (there's a huge difference between cheap vs. good sticks)
• a high speed USB 2.0 stick can be slower than a full speed USB 1.1 stick
• don't trust anything they tell you about the speed of that stick, try it yourself

I could not find a decent program to benchmark the transfer speeds, so I had to settle for copying large and small files using Total Commander. Here's some results (first write then read speeds):

• brandless 32 Mb USB stick (a Raritan promo, 1.1 full) 830 / 1500 kbyte/sec
• FreeCom 64 Mb USB stick (2.0 high) 560 / 1000 kbyte/sec
• brandless 128 Mb USB Stick (an Interoute promo, Feiya technologies, 1.1 full) 830 / 1500 kbyte/sec
• TrekStor 512 Mb USB stick (2.0 high) 9900 / 17000 kbyte/sec
• Manhattan 3.5" HDD external casing (Cyprus technologies, a bit el cheapo, 2.0 high) 21000 / 32000 kbyte/sec
• Iomega external HDD (sorry, forgot the type, 2.0 high anyway) 19000 / 28000 kbyte/sec

Also note that my self built Manhattan external harddrive (120 Gb 7200) as faster than the Iomega (sorry, haven't got the specs here, perhaps a slightly slower harddisk, dunno).

In general, reading speed on USB sticks turned out to be roughly twice as fast as writing speed. On harddisks the difference was smaller, roughle 1.5 times (overhead? saturation?). I was expecting very good read performance from the TrekStor stick, but appearently there's still nothing that beats a harddisk when it comes to sequential data. Random access may be a very different story though... (Windows Vista Superfetch anyone?)

I have some doubts about the USBInfo program, I suspect it shows capabilities and not actual modes, but I'm not entirely sure.

I've tried different combos, and at one time had 7 different devices on the hub, and still the TrekStor did a 10 Mbyte / sec... either this Targus hub is a smart one (I though only Belkin had some of those?) or it simply didn't matter what kind of devices I mixed. Will I ever know?

5. Harddrivin' the urban myth - PATA SATA IDE and partitioning.
26.02.2005

Yeah... computers are suffering from urban myths these days as well... When talking about IDE drives, things are based on the truth (well a bit of truth at least :-)) but times change, and some of these stories no longer hold true. Let's start by targeting some general myths...

#1. RAID is faster... Not True.

#2. 7200 is faster than 5400... Not true.

Update: well, Western Digital does, sort of. They sell 'lower speed' 'green' drives. Hmmm.

#3. High density drives with few platters are faster than low density with many platters... Partially true.

#4. Drives with 8 MB cache are always faster than those with 2 MB cache. Partially true.

#5. Transfer rate is all... Not true.

#6. Access time is all... Not true.

#7. Low access time is better for servers, high transfer rate is better for clients... True.

#8. SCSI is faster than SATA. SATA is faster than IDE... Not true.

That's the first batch, now lets look at the underlying layer of technology (drumroll please).

SATA vs. PATA vs. ATAPI.

IDE drives come in two flavours, older PATA drives (also simply called IDE) and newer SATA drives. The difference is in the connector, older drives use big flat cables where the newer SATA drives use small thin cords. There's more, obviously :-) Each SATA drive has its own controller, while IDE drives share their controllers (more about that later).

Then, there's ATAPI. For the sake of simplicity, we'll just treat the ATAPI as if they are regular IDE drives. And why not? They use the same flat ribbon cable, and like to be either master or slave...

Sata drives are easy to connect, but they may still be a pain in the proverbial ass when trying to boot from them, bootup disks, BIOS issues, brrr.... I've had my share...

IDE (PATA) master and slaves.

It ain't bondage ;-)

Modern computers often have two IDE controllers, the 'primary' and 'secundary'. On each controller you can hook up two IDE drives. When you connect two IDE drives to a single controller, you have to set one drive to 'master' and the other to 'slave'. There must be a distinction, wouldn't you say so?

You specify the drive configuration with jumpers on the drive. There are a few (pertty much self explaining) options, though not all brands and configurations may have the sane jumpers...

• master with slave present
• single drive
• slave
• cable select

#9. Cable select slows your IDE drives down... True. Sort of.

#10. Two harddrives on the same controller slows your IDE drives down... True.

#11. With two IDE hard drives on one controller, the slowest one defines the speed for all connected drives... No longer true.

#12. The fastest drive must be master. Not true.

#13. A harddrive should never be slave if an ATAPI device is master. Not true. Sort of.

#14. Combining an IDE and ATAPI device on one controller slows your hardrive down... No. And yes.

What goes where with multiple IDE / ATAPI devices.

Obviously, transfering loads of data over one controller does slow things down as with two harddrives. However the ATAPI device (a CDROM or something similar) so so much slower that it's going to be hard to saturate the controller. Except in one situation: if you try to write DVD's your machine will have to deliver data at a fast clip. In that case you should keep the harddrive with the data to burn on another controller than the DVD burner.

Normally I would put my fastest harddisk and my rarely used CD burner on the first controller, and move the slowest harddisk with the often used CDROM drive to the second controller.

However, when burning DVD's speed matters. You cannot afford to loose any bytes when writing to a DVD, unless you like to buy new blanks all the time... In those cases I would put the DVD burner on the other controller. In other words, if all files to burn are on a harddrive connected to the first controller, my DVD burner would go on the second one.

Of course, this doesn't matter anymore with all things SATA.

Partitioning.

Fun, ain't it? Not only do you have drives, but you also have partitions. The thing to remember is: drives most often start writing at the outside of the platter (where they are faster) then go inwards (and get slower the further they go). If you split your drive in partitions, and the drive heads have to move between the partitions, that may slow down your overall system performance.

First the myths again...

#15. Setting the Windows swap file to a fixed size speeds up your machine... Yes. Sort of.

#16. Placing the swap file on the second partition makes your machine faster... No.

If you have two drives things are a little different. In those cases I prefer to put the swap file and temp stuff on the first partition of the second drive. But I already said so :-)

#17. FAT(32) is faster than NTFS... Depends.

Sample partitioning schemes.

One drive setup:

 

disk / part --------------	name ---------	size --------	usage ---------------------------------
d1p1	BOOT	medium	windows xp plus a swap file of fixed size
d1p2	TEMP	small	just enough to handle all temp files
d1p3	FILES	large	everything else

 

disk / part --------------	name ---------	size --------	usage ---------------------------------
d1p1	BOOT	medium	windows xp, all applications
d1p2	STUFF	large	anything you like :-)
d2p1	TEMP	small	temp and swap, don't forget the temp paths
d2p2	FILES	large	your valuable documents and such

 

disk / part --------------	name ---------	size --------	usage ---------------------------------
d1p1 sata	BOOT	medium	windows xp, all applications
d1p2 sata	GAME	medium	if you use multibooting this is the place to play
d2p1 sata	PROJECTS	medium	space for video capturing etc.
d2p2 sata	STORAGE	large	anything you dunno' yet what to do with
d3p1 pata 1m	TEMP	small	temp and swap as before
d3p2 pata 1m	FILES	large	more valuable documents
d3p3 pata 1m	SECURE	small	acronis true image rescue zone
atapi pata 1s	DVD	x	matsuhita el cheapo dvd reader
atapi pata 2m	CDRW	x	liteon cd burner

The bad brands.

There are none. Really. What is good now is bad tomorrow and the other way around. Look on the internet, listen to experiences of other users. Don't consider a certain brand bad, but look at the individual models disregarding the brand.

#18. There are no bad brands. Not true.

Links for the selfhelp crowd.

http://www.techsupportforum.com
http://www.storagereview.com

4. Link and batch.
25.02.2005

A micro-course on batch programming... launching stuff from batch files, and NOT launching stuff from batch files. This is NOT for total beginners, you need a few miles on those tires.

Forgotten but oh so powerfull: the batch file and command prompt. Yeah, still under Windows XP a nice and helpfull comrade... But how do you launch something from a batch file? And why does it sometimes stop there? Here's a little thing how to help you automate stuff. Or at least the way I do it... End I'm going to show a few tricks that did cost me way too much time to figure out...

First, we'll prepare.

I am not going to teach you all the ins and outs of batch programming!

Prepare.

1. create a folder c:\software\batch
2. create a folder c:\software\utils
3. edit in control panel / system / advanced / environment variables the 'path' value
4. add to the end (without the parenthesis) ";\c:\software\batch;c:\software\utils"
5. ok
6. now find somewhere on the internet three little programs: Q, FindWindow and Waitrun... they're not essential though :-) find adequate replacements if you like
7. copy these into the 'utils' directory

Hello world.

Due to the above, we can add anything we like to either the batch or utils directory, and execute it from the command line. I often use a very old editor 'Q-edit' abbreviated to 'Q'.

1. start the command line prompt (aka Dos prompt)
2. q c:\software\batch\qbatch.bat and create the following program
 
c:
cd c:\software\batch
q *.bat

Let's create a little batchfile that tells us not much... Use notepad or q or whatever, and create a batchfile called 'hello.bat':

echo "hello world"
pause

hello [enter]

Update. To make life easier I wrote three small command line proggies: FindWindow, WaitRun and SkipRun. If you need them drop me a line. Mmmm... maybe I already mentioned them :-) Anyway, SkipRun is the new addition, it checks for a window, and if that window doesn't exist it launches the specified program and continues, ie. it doesn't wait for completion execution. This, of course, makes the whole shortcut excercise here a bit superfluous :-)

Starting other programms.

Once you got the basics down, you can launch a whole array of other programs via a single batchfile. If those programms can be found because they are included in the path (they reside in the c:\windows directory, for example) they can be started by simply their name:

notepad

c:\windows\notepad.exe

1. new shortcut
2. browse to c:\windows\notepad.exe
3. name it 'test'
4. copy this shortcut to the c:\software\batch file (drag'n drop, you will notice the shortcut is actually just a file with the extension .lnk)
5. now, from the command prompt, start the notepad via it's shortcut by typing: test [enter]

Still with me? Let's tune this a little using two small utilities: FindWindow and WaitRun. I'll end this whole section with three sample scripts, that show you the use of batchfiles, and the FindWindow and WaitRun utilities.

RA2.

I love to play Red Alert 2. To save me wear and tear, I created an image of the original CD and put that image on the harddisk. You can create those images with all sorts of programms. Then I use Daemon Tools to make that image available to the rest of my system. When I start RA2, I want to load Daemon Tools first, then tell Daemon Tools what image to load, and then I load RA2 itself. All in all I needed four files:

1. ra2.bat - a batch file that calls all the other stuff
2. mnt_tools.lnk - to load Daemon Tools
3. mnt_ra2.lnk - to mount the RA2 cd in Daemon Tools
4. ra2.lnk - to start RA2

"c:\program files\d-tools\daemon.exe".

"c:\program files\d-tools\daemon.exe" -mount 0,g:\disk_images\red_alert_2_soviet.ccd

"c:\games\westwood\ra2.exe"

findwindow *command*money*cheat*
if errorlevel 1 goto loaded
    mnt_tools.lnk
    mnt_ra2.lnk
    mnt_trnr.lnk
    ra2.lnk
:loaded

...when it comes to launching multiple programms there's no stopping us, that is :-) For example, if you have one of those nifty IntelliType keyboards, you hook up one of the special keys to a batch file you created yourself. With the press of a button your PureBasic editor starts, some music is played on the background, and Triliian and your mail programm are launched as well, and a browser window to participate in a forum... (And yes, FindWindow and WaitRun were quick hacks in PureBasic, I know as I wrote them myself :-))

Trillian.

Do another FindWindow example... Trillian is a little client that allows connection to the networks of MicroSoft Messenger, ICQ, Yahoo Messenger, etc. It's nice, but has one handicap: it can be started more than once. Using findwindow twe can easily fix that.

findwindow *trillian*
if errorlevel 1 goto loaded
    trillian.lnk
:loaded

UltraMon is a tool for handling multiple monitors. There are other freeware solutions around such as MultiMon (which I do use these days) but UltraMon is still nice.

So are dual screens. Unfortunately, dual screens don't always do what they are supposed to do, especially those using an Intel Extreme chipset on a Dell Latitude D505 laptop. When I boot up in a multimonitor configuration, all my icons are moved to the wrong places... very annoying, especially as this happens AFTER the start of Windows, after a few seconds. In other words, immediately restoring the icon position on startup doesn't help, as after that they are moved. So the auto restore icons feature of UltrMon doesn't help me much here. Fortunately there's a command line parameter for UltraMon that allows a restore action by simply calling UltraMon. Now all l have left is make sure UltraMon is started AFTER my desktop got screwed up (roughly 2 seconds)...

For this I use a little thing called 'waitrun'. All it does is wait a little and then execute whatever you gave it as a parameter. Here's the old entry that was once part of the 'start / startup' folder on my old PC:

C:\software\utils\waitrun.exe 2 "c:\program files\ultramon\ultramon.exe" /r

Damn, this turned out to be a free mini course. Donations are welcome, of course. There's a tin cup nearby the door...

3. The MBR of all MBR's.
25.02.2005

Not very logical but still happening... take a computer with two SATA drives. The boot drive is okay, the second drive has a damaged MBR. How do you get access to the files on the second drive? Good question....

(What happened before: after loosing half my hair over a batch of true lemons (Maxtor 6Y080M0 80 Gb SATA disks) I got a WD Raptor 740 and a WD2000JB... And the Raptor subsequently crashed... But what it did do, was take the WD2000JB MBR with it!)

No matter what I tried, I couldn't boot *anything* with the second drive attached, none of the following would work...

• Knoppix
• Ultimate Boot CD
• BartPE
• Windows XP Boot CD
• Dos boot CD
• Dos boot diskette
• FreeDos boot disk

• PartitionMagic
• FDisk
• Ghost
• Advanced Partition Recovery
• Vamos
• Partition Doctor

So what next? I first moved all data to another harddisk. Then I deleted all the partitions on that drive from within Windows XP, and recreated them. Then tried to boot again... and tada... it worked, all bootable media booted again. Huh? Duh... Uh... Oh. Ain't got the right words for that.

Which brings me to my conclusion, and a question to all of you...

1. when a harddisk crashes, it can take other drives down as well, dunno if that's XP to blame or not
2. there is a difference between the bootloaders on a harddrive and those on other media, at least as far as XP is concerned
3. you can screw up the MBR in such a way that all bootloaders screw up, except XP's one once installed on the harddrive
4. you can recover by deleting all the partitions from that troublesome drive from within XP
5. and now the question: is there software that allows replacing / overwriting / booting a SATA drive with a malformed MBR?

2. Braindead on arrival.
25.02.2005

Is quality a thing of the past? Have a look at this... I upgraded recently, and this is what happened...

New mainboard Asus K8N-E Deluxe.

... all onboard including raid chips, sound, nforce3, great! Well... not exactly. You see, Asus (and the shop) forgot to mention some things...

• the NForce3 chipset on this board does not provide proper IRQ19 bios support, so no way to use Ghost, multiboot, etc...
• you can't boot from a SATA drive connected to the SIL chipset, you can from a RAID but not a single drive
• RAID's slow, and single drives on the SIL are not seen (update, check here!)
• the bios stinks, start flashing 
• the floppy connector is at a horrible place if you have a small case with something else but air nearby the front bottom... it's where I have my harddisks (okay, this is a personal thing :-))

Ghosting issues.

As above, no such luck for me anymore, but Acronis TrueImage appears to work! Good. Not that TrueImage recognizes my USB drive mind you.

Lemon Maxtor 6Y080M0 80 Gb SATA drives.

They stink. I can write a long story on them, but it boils down to this: do you do lots of harddisk copying, OR do you want to use RAID (in any form) then stay clear of these. It took me a few days to figure out what was the source of all my problems, these drives!

4 Day Raptor.

Out go the Maxtors. In comes the Raptor. A very expensive 10000 rpm 74 Gb harddisk, the non plus ultra.

Lasted 4 days. Crash. Bye Raptor. (The new one is still running, but I wonder...)

(17.01.2007... and the Raptor is still working. Well, that's two years for now...)

0 Day AOpen GForce 6600GT.

I liked the enclosed software (SpellForce is fun). But what's the use of the best card if it doesn't work? All sorts of strange visual problems on screen, so back to the shop... again! Changed it for an Asus NX6600GT, which is about the same board. This one does work, but I was somewhat disappointed at the performance... either that, or FutureMark's 3DMark05 simply went out of bounds.

7 days power supply Silentmax 450 W.

Nice blue powersupply including a temp sensor and separate power fan connectors, very nice indeed. I hooked up my casefan, placed the sensor strategically, and waited... Dear Silentmax, make that sensor just a *little* bit more sensitive? I needed open fire (a lighter!) to make the temperature go up enough to speed up the fans. Why the 7 days? After 7 days it stopped working (the sensor), fortunately I had another one from my old electronics hobby days, and that one was even a bit more sensitive.

Anything else that went wrong? Well... not yet. Sigh. But just for laughs I'll add a dead-list to the bottom of this page.

1. In front of you... 3D sound from a 4.1 speaker set.
13.01.2005

This is *very* stupid but works great. If you have a 4 speaker setting, as most of us do, but you don't have the space to put the backspeakers anywhere, here's an alternative. Put the two front speakers directly below your monitor in front of you (hey, that's the way you're facing most of the time anyway :-)) Now take the two back speakers and put them a meter higher, and a meter more to the outsides (so backspeaker left is 1 meter left from and one meter higher than frontspeaker left). Now put that woofer under your desk and try some 3D sound effects. With a little messing around with the volume controls you achieve a decent 3D sound impression... dunno if this works for 5.1 or even fancier sets, al I got is 4 speakers and a bass... You're free to donate something :-)

0. The dead list.
03.09.2010

Videocard - Nvidia 8800GTX - xx.xx.07 - 01.09.10 - 3 years. 

Now that's a bit of a disappointment. That 8800GTX was perhaps the most expensive video card in its day, so why should it give up after only 3 years? For a moment I was afraid my Dell XPS had gone the way of the dodo, but fortunately replacing the video did the job. Still, thats way too quick (and outside the guarantee, obviously). Disappointing, this!

I've replaced it with an Asus ENGTS250. We'll see how long that one lasts...

FDD - Sony 3.5" from an old Compaq Deskpro EN500 - xx.xx.00 .. 21.08.10 - 10 years.

It may have died earlier but I never noticed until I tried to use it :-) Anyway, there's no telling what this old disk drive suffered before I got my grubby hands on this 2nd hand machine. No hard feelings in this case. (And the age is only a guess...)

HDD - Toshiba 2.5" MK4026 from a Dell Inspiron - xx.xx.06 .. xx.07.2010 - 4 years.

That's a bit disappointing as this laptop has seen very little 'road use'. Although, as a surrogate game console I must admit the kids have been hammering it :-) 4 years for yet another harddrive... Into the rubbish can with it!

HDD - Western Digital Raptor WD740 - xx.01.03 .. 12.04.2010 - 7 years.

One of my two Raid 0 Raptors gave up on me. Well, that's fine after seven years in the saddle, and pretty much running almost every day a couple of hours. I first used them in my home built AMD64 machine, and then continued using them in my Dell XPS. Not so anymore, after a little experimenting with SSD's I went back to good 'ol mechanical drives and installed two new VelociRaptors. Let's see if they last me the same 7 years... Probably not :-) If only because, the day this Dell XPS goes down, I'll be going for an SSD setup running Windows 7. But I'm convinced I'll find some use for these two :-)

As seems to be mostly the case, the drive died after irregular disk errors, behaviour that I've seen with multple HDD's. In all those years (knock on wood now!) I've seen two hard crashes, of which one caused total data loss.

(Still puzzling what to do with that one remaining WD740 that still is good... Better start using it before lack-of-usage kills it... or so rumour has it.)

Mouse - Logitech optical mouse - 01.09.2003 .. 17.12.2008 - 5 years.

Impressive. It started 'jittering' so I finally dumped my trustworthy blue optical mouse. I've used it so much, that not only the 'teflon' pads at the bottom wore out, but so did the everything at the bottom, leaving one large smooth surface. Bye trustworthy mouse, let's see if your Dell replacement will last just as long...

Update. No, it didn't. I'm using a Microsoft mouse these days.

HDD - Maxtor Diamond Max Plus 9 120 GB - 01.09.2003 .. 17.12.2007 - 4 years.

Well, four years should not be too shabby. This one has seen its use, been deployed in different machines, and it even has been part of an external USB drive for a while. But... it's gone now. And if 4 years are the norm, I'd better start worrying about some other drives as well... This one, by the way, died gradually on me, doing inconsequent data loss at a slow rate.

Mainboard - Asus K8N-E Deluxe - 25.02.05 .. 13.02.06 - 1 year.

Died just a week before the guarantee expired. Took the shop a few months (!) to get it repaired. In the end they refunded me... Great shop, then, or not so great? Well, they've been rather flexible, so let's stick to 'great'. For now :-)

HDD - Western Digital Raptor WD740 - 05.03.05 .. 07.03.05 - 4 days.

Lasted 4 days. Crash. Bye Raptor. Within guarantee so I got my replacement, which is still running...

Videocard - AOpen GForce 6600GT - 25.02.05 .. 26.02.05 - UOA.

UOA. Unreliable on Arrival. Returned. Got an Asus instead that seems to work fine.

Powersupply - Silentmax 450 W Power Supply - 25.02.05 .. 17.08.06 - 1.5 years.

Good quality (not). First the temperature sensor 7 days after purchase, and now it got instable and caused crashes on heavy loads (with no other changes in the machine). Craptastic.