Monday, November 28
Sorry, but I've been a bit busy.
Yeah, I know. There haven't been many posts for awhile.
My computer was really starting to act funky, and it really wasn't any fun at all to play with it. So last week, I got myself a new 200 gig hard drive, and installed Windows 2003 Server Standard on it, and converted it into a workstation. Thanks to MSFN.ORG for the handy cheat sheet.
Today, I finally got my spam program and email program (Thunderbird) running. I tried to use the new AOL AIM Triton. First thing I had to do was tell the download program (it's only a download program, not an install program, which I find quite stupid) that it's running under Windows XP. It then downloaded and installed it. After many retries, I finally managed to get logged in. Today, after a few reboots, I find that it's not automatically logging me on. I try to logon. Tells my it can't. I retype the password. Can't work. I retype the password again. Can't get logged in. I uninstall it (and then reboot, and then clean up after it), download the old AIM for 95/98/ME, and it works just fine, I get logged in with the password that I typed correctly the first time. The only thing I can figure is that the server for logging into Triton is overloaded. Other than that, I dunno.
I've got some little nits. My wallpaper changing program was working. Now it's not. So I guess I get to find another wallpaper program, but I'm not sure that will fix it either. A bit of a bummer.
I wanted to use Trend Micro for AV here, but that won't work on 2003. I have Norton 2006, but I keep hearing about how badly that's been screwed up, chewing memory and CPU. Norton Corporate AV is supposed to be better in that regard, so I decided to try that. First off, there doesn't seem to be much of an indication when it's actually doing a scan, which it proceeds to do (a quick one, but still) after installation. This is a problem, because it causes LiveUpdate to fail. And if you don't understand what's going on, you wonder what the problem is. I checked processes, and saw what it was doing. Still, the update I got Friday was a corrupt update. Symantec kept puking on it, and reverting to an earlier copy. Every time I rebooted, and I was having to reboot for one thing or another. I got another update Saturday, and no more puking.
2003 updates itself slowly. I've seen 20+ minutes from when I get the first graphical boot screen, then it blanks the screen, and then… nothing happens for quite some time (including no disk activity) and then 20 minutes later, it continues to boot. This might have to do with the bad virus update. I also tweaked how long Windows 2003 waits before dealing with stuck services and processes, which might also have fixed this later. Today, I've been rebooting without much of a pause, so who knows.
I've also set up a shadow copy of my entire application space (i.e. everything under C:\Documents and Settings\Bryan Price\) to see how that works. That seems to be working. I've installed the freaking printer twice on another computer. I don't understand why I can't get it to just work. It appears, but it doesn't connect. Yes, I have this configured as a print server. I've got another printer to install here, and I think that the kids will get my old one. An HP 855C. A good printer that's 10 years old. I bought it to replace my less than 1 year old Epson LQ570, as 8 hours to print 10+ pages was a bit much. The paper pickup needs to be cleaned every now and then. The new printer is an Epson R300, which I plan on using more for directly printing on CDRs and DVDRs than anything else. I'd still like to pick up an all in one printer as well. If I knew one that also printed on CDRs and DVDRs, I would have just gone with that one.
I bought a USB to IDE cable. Boy, has it been worth that little scratch. Instead of trying to cram 80 gigabytes onto an already crowded 160 gigger, I've been able to connect and unconnect my old 80 gig drive with easy. Just need to grab something from it again. Easy enough to do. Just a USB connecter on one end, and an IDE connector on the other, with a power brick supplying the current for power. And it came with an adapter for 2.5" drives too.
My backup flash needs to have the batch file updated. I found out that the Mozilla I was backing up was my old Mozilla Suite, not Firefox. Oh well, good thing I had my old hard drive available.
I couldn't install the software that came with my HP DVD burner. I've run into that before, server software is kicked out, for no reason as far as I'm concerned. Roxio installed just fine, as did Daemon Tools with the new 4.0 version. I doubt that I'll install much more for that (like Alcohol 120%, or Nero) maybe the DVDInfo program. I've got my phone software installed, but I haven't installed my bluetooth dongle yet. I may not install that, since I seem to have everything under control with the USB cable.
I've got plenty of other things to write about as well, and hopefully I'll get caught up on them later this week. Permanent link posted by bytehead @ 11/28/2005 08:05:00 PM
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