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Hasta la vista, Windows 7

October 30, 2009

Vista busy cursor For the second time in a matter of weeks I found myself unable to boot into Vista on my home desktop due to a file permissions problem. The tell-tale signs are becoming familiar. Boot-up starts as normal with the screen that has the pulsating green progress bar.

When that disappears we get a black screen and after a few seconds the mouse cursor appears in the centre. The disk continues to thrash for a few more seconds then settles, but we remain stuck looking at the mouse cursor on a black field. The black screen of death.

I believe the problem is that Windows has reached the point where it wants to write to the disk but is unable to because the file it is trying to access has been made read-only or otherwise had its permissions stripped away. You’d think that a booting OS would always have access rights but apparently not.

I wasted hours with Spinrite, thinking it must be due to a damaged sector. The only way out of this, short of a reinstall of the OS, is to boot up in a different OS, maybe on a different disk or from a CD, and then manually change the permissions on the files in the drive that won’t boot.

Ironically, it is the use of different OS’s on different disks on the PC that seems to be implicated in giving rise to the problem in the first place. Particularly if one of the OS’s is Windows 7, or at least the Release Candidate.

I have had two disks on my desktop for years. The larger one (250GB) is the Vista drive that came with the PC. I later added a 40GB drive salvaged from an older computer and for a long time had XP on it. I found I could switch between the two without problem. The BIOS allows you to choose which disk to boot from.

More recently, I used the 40GB disk to try out Windows 7 64-bit – first the Beta then the RC. All went well until my first “black screen of death” crisis. That sorry tale is recounted here. I blamed myself because I had meddled with the permissions on the Vista disk, but that was only to add permissions which seemed to have been “taken away” somehow without my intervention, making files inaccessible over the local network. I am starting to wonder whether Windows 7 was responsible in some way for messing with permissions on the Vista drive.

To my mind, an OS should not be making automatic file permission changes on other drives on the system. I’m not sure why but I suspect Windows 7 does this. The first black screen crisis was resolved when I booted in Windows 7 and could see that the Vista disk had been stripped of permissions. I added them back manually from within Windows 7 and was then able to boot back into Vista.

A second black screen crisis happened a couple of days ago. I had (as on the previous occasion) booted in Windows 7 to play around with a few 64-bit apps. I tried to uninstall an older 64-bit app but Windows 7 refused, claiming it could not locate the original MSI file. I then tried to return to Vista only to find I was back to my black screen of death. Worse, I could not get back into Windows 7 either. That would start to boot then spontaneously restart, causing a never ending loop.

I was forced to do a clean install of XP on the 40GB drive. I had no important data on that drive so it wasn’t an issue.  I could then see all the files on the Vista drive, so as a precaution copied around 200GB of data to my 1TB external drive. I did notice all the files came across with the read-only flag set, which seemed odd. As Vista continued to prove unbootable, even in safe mode, despite hours of Spinrite and other attempted solutions, I decided I would use XP as my main working system for the time being so I started installing apps and device drivers. I also wanted my data available on the network so turned on file sharing. I noticed that when I shared the Vista drive it took a very long time and gave me a message about writing permissions. That got me wondering. I tried booting in Vista and of course it came right up as if nothing had happened.

As I was coming to realise, it was a variant on the permissions problem which had stopped Vista from booting, and the act of sharing the drive had restored the required permissions.  It is though very worrying to think that Windows can so easily get itself locked into an unbootable state like this, with no eay way for the user to diagnose and no solution that does not involve fixing the unbootable disk via a second OS on another drive.

I am hugely relieved to be up and running again, but extremely suspicious of Windows 7 and whether it has tendencies to make unwelcome interventions in other drives on the system, potentially jamming up other OS’s which may be installed on them. Well, for now at least Windows 7 has gone. Hasta la vista.

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Posted in Computers, Microsoft, Technology, Windows, Windows Vista, XP | Tagged | 1 Comment »

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Hasta la vista, Vista!

October 22, 2009

Vista busy cursor Never has the name of this blog been more apposite than on the day that Vista’s replacement, Windows 7, officially ships.

Vista has had a very troubled time, as faithfully documented here from early in its lifetime. It earned itself a bad reputation with its plethora of teething problems, having been let out of Redmond half cooked, and couldn’t shake off that negative perception even long after Microsoft had sorted out the glitches. This gave the likes of Apple an opportunity to expand their market share and cement their “we are the choice of the cool dude” image.

But Microsoft realised all they had to do was complete the Vista cooking process, give it a facelift and a few natty new features, rebadge it and push it out to the market to bury the bad Vista Karma as quickly as they could.

And Windows 7 already seems destined to be a hit, repairing the damage to Microsoft’s fortunes inflicted by Vista. Maybe not quite the euphoria of Windows 95 back in the day, but the nearest thing to it Microsoft has enjoyed since. And there will be a palpable sense of relief.

We already know W7 is a stable, quality platform. Many people have been using it in RC form for months. There is no risk whatever of a repeat of the Vista debacle.

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Rocky Gibraltar Earth

October 5, 2009

Books Finding time for reading has been hard for years, and to compound the frustration most of my recent book choices have been disappointments.

Normally I have both a paper book and an audiobook on the go, thus using technology to extend “reading” time to commuting, dog walking and the like. Now a third front has been opened with ebooks on my Windows Mobile phone. I was getting fed up with my increasingly absurd “dead tree” book, The Interpretation of Murder by Jed Rubenfeld, and had nothing else to read so bought Gibraltar Earth by Michael McCollum in PRC format (mobipocket), based on a ringing endorsement by SF fan Steve Gibson of Spinrite and “Security Now!” fame.

Buying Gibraltar Earth as an ebook made it both cheap ($5) and near instantaneous by the miracle of Internet file download, followed by a dangerous dabble with WMDC (aka ActiveSync) to straddle the final, short hop from PC to phone. I’d have preferred to get it on a Kindle but such delights have yet to make their way across the Atlantic.

My wife has denounced my ebook venture as a terminally geeky thing to do. She insists the very idea of attempting to read a book on a phone, even one with a large high-res screen, is wacky beyond redemption. I was sure to wreck my (already pathetic) eyesight. I pointed out that I can adjust the font size so that it is bigger than the paper book I was reading, as readily proved by a side by side comparison. You end up with rather fewer words per screenful than you would have on a page of a paperback, but navigating from screen to screen is very easy with the phone’s “joystick”. The wife remained unconvinced, even when I pointed out that I no longer needed to worry about losing my place or fannying around with bookmarks, as the software would always keep my place.

I can even do a text search, so if I come across the name of a character in the story and can’t remember where they last appeared, I can search for previous occurrences by name rather than having to scan the pages of a physical book by eye. Best of all, because my “book” is in my mobile phone, I always have it with me so if I have a spare moment, say waiting outside school to collect my daughter, I can steal a few minutes of reading time. So whether or not reading a book on a phone sounds or looks ridiculous, it is perfectly feasible and has many enumerable advantages.

Sadly, though, this did not turn out to be the hoped for happy solution to my reading material crisis. Not because of any particular issue with mobipocket books on Windows Mobile phones in general. It’s just that the book itself turns out to be dire.

It is such a let down, after the build-up Steve Gibson gave it. The premise sounds riveting. Centuries from now, mankind makes first contact with alien life but discovers that the galaxy is ruled by an all-powerful cruel race which enslaves or destroys all other life, so humans are only still around and free because they have yet to come to the super-aliens’ attention. But it is only a matter of time before they are discovered, which raises the question of how mankind will deal with the problem. Fascinating concept, which unfolds over a trilogy.

But the writing is so amateurish and cliched. Almost stomach-churningly so. I may stick with it a bit longer but am finding it hard to take.

I had been tempted to start reading some SF by Peter F Hamilton, based on Steve’s effusive praise, but have been put off as I’m not sure I can trust his judgement. This is possibly unfair on Hamilton who is a far better known and more prolific author. Maybe I’ll sneak a read of a couple of pages in Smiths or Waterstones just to make sure it’s not another complete turkey.

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When sharing is not enough

October 1, 2009

Vista busy cursor I came perilously close to trashing my entire Vista install, including loss of some files.  Most of my key data is backed up but the consequences would still have been painful, particularly thinking of the time needed to get all my software reinstalled and everything configured.

And it would have been for nothing.  All because I was messing around with folder permissions and not being careful enough.

I was getting cheesed off with not being able to get to some of the folders and files on my Vista desktop’s C: drive from the various household laptops, over the domestic twifi.  I had shared the whole of the C: drive but many key folders, eg the desktop, were not accessible.  I found out that this was because sharing is not enough.  There are two hurdles to be overcome for one PC to access another’s files over a LAN or wifi: the folder must both be shared and have sufficiently relaxed file system permissions. So I set about trying to make everything on the C: drive accessible to Everyone, with Full Control.  It sounds dangerous but isn’t really. The whole network is protected by a fully stealthed NAT router.

Well, it shouldn’t have been dangerous but was nearly terminal, although I didn’t know anything was wrong for a while.  That’s because I have Windows 7 RC installed on another local disk (D:) and decided to boot into that for a while to try a few things out.  Only later did I try to boot back into Vista – and failed.  I got as far as the boot up screen with progress bar then all went black.  The mouse cursor was still visible, and moved in response to the mouse, but that was it.

Not realising the cause of the problem, I proceeded to lose a fair bit of time.  Trying many forms of OS repair from the Vista recovery disk, running Spinrite, pulling my hair out.  I was on the point of giving up and reinstalling Vista from scratch (and losing everything on the C: drive) when I had an idea.  I could boot into Windows 7 from the D: drive then try to recover my files from the C: drive (and save them on my external 1TB drive) before embarking on the Vista reinstall.

So I booted up in Windows 7 and found that the Vista boot drive (which appears as D: from within Windows 7) was greyed out.  If I attempted to explore it I would be fobbed off with an “Access Denied” message.  I found, though, that if I opened an administrator command prompt I could still navigate the disk.  I went so far as to start a massive disk copy from within the DOS prompt, intending to save all the files to the external drive.

Luckily, my brain started to work and it all began to make sense.  The admin command prompt could access the drive because the permissions on it allowed admin access, but there was no access for “regular users” so the drive was greyed out in Windows Explorer.  The penny dropped.  In trying to open up user permissions on that drive I had somehow screwed things up and removed some key access rights so that critical files were no longer accessible at boot time.  So if I could resolve that I might be able to boot up in Vista again.

From within Windows 7 I found I could still access the Properties >Security dialog on the drive and (carefully) give Full Control to Everyone, using UAC to elevate my rights to admin level for the purpose.

And of course that did the trick and I was able to get back into Vista with all data intact.  It had been a very, very near miss and entirely down to my own ineptitude.

From which I learn that if you are going to be an idiot, it helps if the fact of your idiocy can be persuaded to dawn on you in a reasonably timely fashion.

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Wishing Rainbows End would End

September 16, 2009

Books Is it wrong to not be enjoying Vernor Vinge’s sci-fi novel, Rainbows End, winner of the 2007 Hugo award? I’m listening to it as an audio book, am about half way through it and finding it hard going.

I can see why it might have gone down well with the Hugo award judges.  It has some very strong ideas about a potential near future where day to day human experience, especially visual experience, is enhanced by wearable gadgetry.  It takes the idea of virtual reality and projects it onto day to day life.  People wear contact lenses packed with tiny electronics which modify perceived reality by overlaying computer-generated views of objects and people.

The system is called “Epiphany”, and users can select between multiple parallel virtual views of the world.  Some of the virtual views are vast and very elaborate.  They are maintained by millions of contributors (forming “belief circles”), who could be enthusiasts or doing it for commercial purposes.  In the story, San Diego recreated as a Terry Pratchett world is so popular that Pratchett’s wealth has skyrocketed and he now owns most of Scotland.

All this is terribly clever and inventive, but it grates.  It has something of a cyberpunk feel about it, the way it glorifies technology for low-lifes mixed with a new attendant vocabulary for the reader to have to decipher on the fly.  It’s like the most irritating bits of Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash grinding on and on without respite.

The reader’s voice does not help.  His gruff “old man” voice for the dour, mean-spirited Robert Gu, the main protagonist, particularly gets on my nerves.

I suppose I’ll stick with it.  Only another 7 hours of my life that I won’t get back.

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District 9: More Independence Day than Cry Freedom

September 14, 2009

Clapperboard Maybe my expectations were too high. Everyone has been talking about District 9 and its hard-hitting allegorical commentary about the horrors of apartheid, but I found it hard to take seriously.

For the first 20  minutes or so, I was asking myself if it was supposed to be a parody.  I was eventually able to engage with it, and it’s not as if I was checking my watch every 5 minutes, but at the end I was left scratching my head, trying to work out if the film was any good or not.

There are some criticisms that I feel sure are fair to hurl at it.  The first is aimed at the assortment of cardboard cut-out villains.  They do not belong in any “serious” film. The second is the rather hackneyed redemption storyline.  The third is the fundamental lack of credibility of key elements of the story line.  Would a vast organisation like MNU really attempt to evict 1.8 million individuals in a walled-off slum by sending in the project leader with a small back-up team to deliver eviction notices personally? Hardly up to the scale of the operation unless MNU planned to take centuries over the project.


But most of all, the film lacked any real gravitas.  It was violent but not gritty.  It supposedly had pretensions of depth, using the sci-fi medium to explore the dark nature of apartheid, but ultimately it did not tell us anything new on that score.  The apartheid construct was little more than an excuse for some violent action scenes.  Ultimately, it was a lot closer in depth to Independence Day than Cry Freedom.

So I don’t buy the notion that District 9 was anything more than a workaday sci-fi action film, so that’s how it should be judged.  And on that basis there are quite a few positives, not least the excellent graphics work on the aliens themselves and their squalid habitat. The action sequences involving the robot gun-suit were well put together, but that idea has been used before in a number of films, such as the “loaders” in Aliens.

Anything good to say on the acting and characterisation front?  Hardly.  All the characters are wooden stereotypes or subtitled croaking aliens, apart from Sharlto Copley as the central character, Wikus van der Merwe, who is deliberately portrayed as a sweet-natured oaf, promoted way out of his depth.  He pulls off the character very well, but while it is refreshing to have such an unlikely kind of hero, it does nothing to help with suspension of disbelief.

Final conclusion, then.  It was entertaining enough and different enough to be worth going to see.  But it does not remotely begin to merit the hype.

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England football team promoted to the bigtime

September 10, 2009

I remember writing a distinctly gloomy piece about the England football team after the ignominious defeat to Croatia, at Wembley in  November 2007, which finally took the  Euro 2008 finals out of reach.  It was called “England football team relegated to the wilderness” and speculated about how the resulting fall in world rankings and consequent lower seeding in future qualifying tournaments would add significant extra hurdles to England’s chances of making it back to the final stages of major international football competitions such as the World Cup.

England have now banished that fear by qualifying for South Africa 2010 (and in some style, it being Croatia’s turn to suffer a bit of ignominy) but I don’t think I was wrong to write what I did.

Without even coming close to the mess they made of Sven Goran Eriksson’s departure and choice of successor, they might easily have replaced Steve McClaren with another inadequate appointment.  If they had then it is not hard to see how England might by now have found themselves wandering in that wilderness, occasionally bumping into Scotland, Wales and N Ireland.  I guess the FA deserve credit for settling on Capello but, as I explained in a comment to this post, they rather lucked into a situation where the outstanding candidate had helpfully just been fired by Real Madrid and was on the lookout for a high profile International appointment so he could end his career on a high.  All the FA had to do was stand firm in the face of the misguided media baying for the appointment of Jose Mourinho.

And my faith in Capello was entirely justified.  He may or may not win the World Cup next year (for starters, Spain and Brazil will not roll over for anyone) but he has got the best out of the remnants of our “golden generation” and blended in a bit of the upcoming platinum generation in the likes of Lennon, Defoe, Milner, Walcott.  We’ will not disgrace ourselves.

Interesting that in that post I wondered about whether Capello would play “British football”, the same point controversially raised by Croatia coach Slaven Bilic before last night’s game.  He accused Capello of changing England’s game away from their traditional style.  Quite possibly Bilic is right, and we have our answer.  Capello has either moved away from or redefined “English football” depending on how you look at it.  Not a problem so long as we win with confidence.  And also by playing good football, laying another of my fears to rest.

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Windows Live Writer to the rescue?

August 11, 2009


Vista busy cursor I have been finding less and less time for blogging and tend to get put off by the time it takes to put together even a modest post.  It’s not so much the words – those normally flow quite readily.  It’s the fiddly add-ons, like the animated gifs and bookmark bars and particularly the photos.  I tend to include a lot of pictures in some of my blogs and on WordPress it is a real fart to insert pictures, size them to fit exactly, etc.

What I really want is a WYSIWYG blog editor with drag and drop photos.  Of course I remember Paul Thurrott of WinSupersite fame going on about Windows Live Writer when talking to Leo Laporte on the Windows Weekly podcast.  So I’m trying it.  I have installed WLW and am using it right now.

So, let’s add a photo.

Well that’s wasn’t all that much better than using WordPress.  I still have to copy and paste a URL, but it’s a bit less fiddly and resizing is easier.

Let’s save this and see what it looks like.

Conclusion?  Disaster!

The resize of the image failed because the preview is not true to the actual size as finally displayed.  And fine control of paragraphs is messed up.

The only benefit is that it is more responsive.  WordPress takes such a long time to update each edit.

Guess I’m still looking for the magic bullet.  I tried, Paul, I tried.

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This iPhoneless Life #10 – Almost enough to make me buy an iPhone

August 10, 2009

iPod As I have been documenting over the last few months, I have got my WM6 phone pretty much doing all the same things as an iPhone but with the added advantage of wireless stereo Bluetooth earphone support.

Of course there are some downsides.  The device, an HTC TyTN II, is not as svelte and elegant as an iPhone and the user interface, being based on Windows Mobile, is not as slick and well integrated as the Apple equivalent. Also, the looser software/hardware integration of Windows Mobile devices, and in particular the greater reliance on third-party utilities, is more likely to cause grief.

A case in point is the clash between Windows Media Player Mobile (WMPM) and Audible.com’s player. For reasons best known to themselves, Audible will not allow their audiobooks to be played on WMPM, instead requiring users to install Audible’s proprietary audiobook player. Maybe it’s because WMPM does not support bookmarking. It  would not have been that much of a problem to have to use two separate applications for music/podcasts vs. audiobooks were it not for the fact that they conflict with each other causing the phone to crash.

The culprit appears to be the Audible player.  Once it has been run, it seems to result in some persistent locking of resources which interferes with the operation of Windows Media Player, even after the Audible player application has been closed.  You can still open and use Windows Media, but when you try to close the latter down, as you would if say updating your podcasts or synchronising your music, the phone locks up and requires a time-consuming soft reset.

I have tried installing various bits of kit to try to troubleshoot or debug the problem, but whatever it is has its hooks too deep down within the operating system and I cannot fathom it.  It is very annoying but I guess I’m stuck with it for the foreseeable future unless anyone has any bright ideas.

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Twitter is down again

August 6, 2009

Vista busy cursor Not even a fail whail.

I’d have tweeted this fact but obviously can’t. We need Twitter2 as a medium for tweets about the main Twitter being unavailable. And reciprocally, of course.

Posted in Internet, Technology | Tagged | 1 Comment »

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