The migration from 7.5 to 11 was not as smooth as I had hoped. We used to netboot and ghostcast that way but with this new version I would have had to edit all the config files and I am not willing to put in the time to figure out how to do that when I’ve never attempted something like that before. So I opted for the boot CD, which wasn’t the easiest thing in the world to come by either.

Our newest machines are Dell Optiplex 755’s. I was able to find a forum online where someone posted directions on how to make the boot disk for it with the correct NIC drivers. It worked perfectly, I was finally able to ghostcast.

1. I went to Dell’s support site (support.dell.com) and downloaded the Intel drivers (about 5MB). Or you can download them here; ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/network/R162323.EXE

2. Extracted the contents to a new folder

3. Located the DOS\NDIS2 directory. Within there there should be 2 files (e1000.dos and protocol.ini).

4. Created a new file called oemsetup.inf

5. Edit the oemsetup.inf file and copy/paste the following into it.

; OEMSETUP.INF for Broadcom Ethernet Adapter

[netcard]
E1000$=”Intel Ethernet”, 0, NDIS, Ethernet, REAL, E1000$_ini, E1000$_ini

[E1000$_ini]
DriverName=E1000$
device=E1000.dos, @INST\E1000$.dos
NETDIR=5:E1000$.dos

6. Save the file

7. Run the Symantec Ghost Boot Wizard Creator.

8. When asked to Select the Network Driver choose Add

9. Click the Setup Button and point to the NDIS folder you just created.

10. Everything else is default until the end.

Now I’ve hit another snag; we dual boot linux-windows and now linux won’t boot up. I can’t get it to boot up into anything because I’m using the linux bootloader. It’s stuck with GRUB in the upper left corner of the screen. I thought ghost was supposed to work with linux. Anybody know what to do?

Update: I just reinstalled grub and it works perfectly now. Sweet.

Original post

So the tech just left my house and guess what? Yeah, not my gateway. He had to add an amplifier because the signal isn’t coming into the house strong enough. Here’s a screen shot of my status page again.

Notice how the Downstream power is now perfect. It was hovering around -9 and -14 before, the disconnections start around -10 so that was the problem. Now I’m just going to keep track of my disconnections (if there are anymore). He said I should be good to go, so we’ll see. I am so glad my gateway is not at fault like the comcast customer service reps kept telling me. I love the techs that come out, they’ve always been helpful, but I have almost never had a helpful phone conversation with the people behind the phones.

First off, we got some new computers at work that have the ATI Radeon 2400 HD Pro video cards. I wish I would have done some research when I had the specs for the new machines because I would have found out that ATI cards don’t get along with Ubuntu, that may have saved me all this time I’ve spent fighting with them.

I cannot even begin to think of how much time I spent trying to get them to work in Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy). It kept telling me there was no hardware that required the restricted drivers, but this graphics card does. I tried editing the xorg.conf file based on what I was finding online and what we had on our old machines, nothing worked. I spent hours and hours looking around online but things other people said worked never did for me. I made sure I had the correct drivers installed, checked that multiple times, it was all what it should have been. I tried doing it the easy way too, by using aticonfig. But every time I tried using that it nuked the xorg.conf file and never recreated it.

Then 8.04 (Hardy) came along. I was hoping it would somehow make things magically work or, you know, at least make things a little easier. It took me about 10 minutes after installing it to get the dual monitors working properly, aticonfig actually worked in 8.04. After spending a lot of time searching around online I found this website that I used to compare the appropriate sections of the xorg.conf file to. I think I had to add a couple things although I can’t remember what. Anyway, using a combination of aticonfig and that website I got it working perfectly. I felt like an idiot though because I forgot I had to adjust the resolution so that it added the two monitors together. Once I did that it worked like a charm. So for anybody who is having issues here’s the xorg.conf file.

Update: So I had to reinstall Hardy because the panel disappeared and I couldn’t get it to come back. This time to get Big Desktop working all I did was enable to restricted driver and type

aticonfig --dtop=horizontal

and it worked perfectly after I restarted the session. I didn’t have to adjust the resolution this time or edit the xorg.conf.

Section “ServerLayout”
Identifier “Default Layout”
Screen 0 “aticonfig-Screen[0]” 0 0
EndSection

Section “Files”
EndSection

Section “Module”
Load “glx”
EndSection

Section “InputDevice”
Identifier “Generic Keyboard”
Driver “kbd”
Option “XkbRules” “xorg”
Option “XkbModel” “pc105″
Option “XkbLayout” “us”
EndSection

Section “InputDevice”
Identifier “Configured Mouse”
Driver “mouse”
Option “CorePointer”
EndSection

Section “Monitor”
Identifier “aticonfig-Monitor[0]“
Option “VendorName” “ATI Proprietary Driver”
Option “ModelName” “Generic Autodetecting Monitor”
Option “DPMS” “true”
EndSection

Section “Device”
Identifier “aticonfig-Device[0]“
Driver “fglrx”
Option “DesktopSetup” “horizontal”
Option “OverlayOnCRTC2″ “1″
BusID “PCI:1:0:0″
EndSection

Section “Screen”
Identifier “aticonfig-Screen[0]“
Device “aticonfig-Device[0]“
Monitor “aticonfig-Monitor[0]“
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection “Display”
Viewport 0 0
Depth 24
EndSubSection
EndSection

If you are using 7.10 and having problems with an ATI card then I suggest trying out 8.04, it definitely made things easier for me.

I’ve been arguing with comcast for months and months now because my connection at home drops multiple times a day for anywhere from a few seconds to 30 minutes to an hour. They have not once sent a tech out to take a look at things, they just immediately tell me it’s my gateway because “we haven’t had any outages in your area.” It actually dropped for more than 2 hrs last night, I went to bed before it came back. I took a screen shot of my modem status page while it was working fine and then while the connection was dead. I don’t know how to interpret this information. Can anybody help me out? I’d really like to know what in the world those critical errors mean.

After nearly a year with ZERO notifications from the RIAA, MPAA, or ESA I finally checked my work email to find 5 notifications of alleged copyright infringement.  I can’t be certain about why we haven’t received any in the last year but an old coworker had a theory.  We changed ISP’s which meant we got a new netblock.  Ever since we changed netblocks we never got a single copyright infringement allegation, until Friday.  Since they rediscovered us I wonder how many notifications I can expect the rest of the quarter.  I’m not sure how aggressive they have been this last year, but last time we received them I think we got slammed with about 20 at once; if my memory serves me correctly.  That was the same time we were handed settlement letters as well, so it was an interesting time to say the least.

So I’m at work trying to get our new computers up and running. They came with Vista installed so I’m trying to put XP on them since we don’t like Vista. We already have 1 vista computer, that’s enough. I keep getting the BSOD when I try to boot off an XP CD so I tried installing XP while in Vista and this is what it showed me:

As you can see, the option to install XP has been grayed out. To use the words of one of my co-workers, Vista sure is nazi-istic.

Update: DBan doesn’t work either, wtf? Any ideas on how I can get rid of Vista and get XP on there?

Update #2: Well I feel a little like an idiot. A past co-worker suggested I change the setting in the bios so that the hard drives are not detected as SATA, so I changed that to the Legacy option and DBan now works. I’m not sure if it would have made a difference when it came to that install XP option being grayed out like in the picture above. I’m going to test that out on the only machine we are keeping Vista on after it isn’t in use anymore. But that SATA thing is definitely why I was getting the BSOD, at least I’m pretty sure. I’ll find out when DBan finishes. It’s taken 20 hrs and 42 minutes to get to 71%, so it’ll be awhile.

Final update: Changing the SATA detection didn’t make a difference when it came to Vista not wanting to let XP be installed over it, it was still grayed out.  But DBan finally finished and I will get to imaging them on Monday.

They are nothing but problems.  Mine was an a-65 and my friend’s was an a-75, both had problems the entire time we owned them.

First I’ll list my issues:

1. The tab that latches when the monitor closes broke one day during class when I opened my laptop and little tiny pieces fell out of the screen.  Within the first 6 months of having it.
2. The hard drive failed shortly after 1 year.
3. The sound control on the side of the laptop never worked correctly; either it was fuzzy or only one speaker worked.  So I had to turn that all the way up and control the sound in windows.
4. The Toshiba software they installed never worked properly, crashing all the time.
5. I reformatted it, trying to fix the sound and software issues, so many times I lost count.
6. Finally the fan died on me.  That was the last straw and is why I now use a Sony Vaio, I love it so far.

My friend’s Toshiba a-75 had problems with the power jack failing to charge the battery unless the laptop was powered off.  If you google Toshiba a-75 you’ll see a huge list of problems exactly like that.  It has to do with poor manufacturing.  I re-soldered it to no avail.  I got all excited because it worked for a little while after I fixed it, but then it died again.  Even after buying an entirely new jack it dies within 4-5 months from what I’ve read.  Best Buy told her it would cost more to fix it than it would to buy a new computer.  The new power jack costs 8 bucks on ebay, Best Buy are a bunch of idiots.  That’s putting it lightly.  But it would be pointless to buy a new jack if it’s just going to fail again.

Moral of the story: NEVER BUY A TOSHIBA LAPTOP!

So far so good since I reformatted back to factory settings. I’ve removed all the crappy programs I didn’t want and now I’m installing all the stuff I do want. Haven’t had any problems yet. Saying that I probably just cursed myself. But we shall see.

I think the most ridiculous part about Vista is all the security crap that put in it. It’s WAY too bloated. I can, MAYBE, understand all the permissions settings on accounts that are not the admin account. But for those to be default on the admin account is incredibly stupid. Even giving myself permission to delete/change the files didn’t work so apparently Microsoft has a lot of work to do. If it wasn’t for the irritating security crap I don’t think Vista would be that bad. It runs very fast (on my 2 gigs of ram) and it does have a nice look to it.

I just bought a new laptop last night since my toshiba took a crap on me again, I decided that would be the last time. The only reason I was willing to get a laptop with Vista on it was because it came with enough ram to actually run it smoothly. I haven’t even had it for 24hrs and I’m already reformatting it to factory settings.

The problems started with norton of course, I had to use the removal tool to get rid of it. Then spy sweeper, oh spy sweeper how I hate you. It would not remove itself. I found a tool online that was supposed to help but it didn’t do anything. I finally had to reinstall spy sweeper off the recovery partition and then uninstall AGAIN, that finally worked. Now I’m trying to remove napster. Vista just does not want me to uninstall any programs. I get the error “setup.exe has stopped working”. Well that’s just effing awesome. So I think, ok screw you, I’ll just rip you out myself. I go to the program files folder and try to delete it. “You do not have permission.” WTF?! I went through and changed the security settings on the folder and files in it to give myself (the damn administrator) permission to do whatever the hell I want to them, that still didn’t work.

Now I sit here on my computer at work with my brand spanking new laptop right next to me reformatting itself back to factory settings. If this doesn’t allow me to uninstall napster and the other programs I don’t want, I’m putting ubuntu on this damn thing.

I was surprised by the large difference between the two.

A conversation about this started up again on the ResNet list. I’ve Gone through and picked out some articles that I think are interesting.

“An affected institution is only required to “make publicly available to their students and employees the policies and procedures related to the illegal downloading and distribution of copyrightedmaterials” and to “develop a plan for offering alternatives to illegal downloading or peer-to-peer distribution of intellectual property as well as a plan to explore technology-based deterrents to prevent such illegal activity” — and only to do so “to the extent practicable”.”

– Techdirt.com

Why not to pass the College Opportunity and Affordability Act of 2007.

This Newsweek article gives more reasons not to give much credibility to the MPAA.

“In a 2005 study it commissioned, the Motion Picture Association of America claimed that 44 percent of the industry’s domestic losses came from illegal downloading of movies by college students, who often have access to high-bandwidth networks on campus.”

“The MPAA has used the study to pressure colleges to take tougher steps to prevent illegal file-sharing and to back legislation currently before the House of Representatives that would force them to do so.”

“But now the MPAA, which represents the U.S. motion picture industry, has told education groups a “human error” in that survey caused it to get the number wrong. It now blames college students for about 15 percent of revenue loss.”

I keep reading that the bill will require schools to offer legal means to download music/movies, notify all students of the policies and to start filtering traffic. If they don’t comply with the requirement the university would lose its financial aid. I’ve read in multiple places that financial aid would be pulled and then again that it wouldn’t. Every time I read another article I get more confused.

This hasn’t been passed yet though. From what I do understand the House and Senate passed different versions, so now they have to meld them both together and go through the process of passing it again through both the House and Senate.

This cnet article was posted on the 7th after the House passed their version of it.