I’ve run into a few problems with a windows xp repair install in the last few days that I wanted to detail the problems and what the resolution was. First, it was someone elses laptop needing a hard drive replacement. The drive was imaged, but windows still would not boot, so I broke out the XP Pro disc for a repair installation *(after trying to chkdsk from the recovery console first and fixboot /fixmbr…) Anyway, I went through the repair install process and the system booted up just fine. My next task was windows update and here’s were I started running into problems. Typing an address in the address bar of internet explorer caused a new window to open, which seemed to hang. Opening the home page seemed fine (i.e. the page that loads when you first open explorer), but you couldn’t navigate to another address.
Category: Tech Support
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Metapackages in Ubuntu for new system provisioning
In ubuntu/debian linux software installs, there are such things as “metapackages” which is a package that just describes what OTHER packages it “needs”. For instance in ubuntu, the kubuntu-desktop package is just such a package – when choosing it, it installs everything necessary for the kubuntu desktop/customizations to install. So, I was hit with an idea while I was apt-getting 30-40 odd packages…. everytime I “provision” a new ubuntu system I have a list of packages that I want to make sure are installed, why don’t I just create a single metapackage and be done with it to make life simpler…. But how could I do this?
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Clonezilla
For quite a while I’ve used ghost4linux (g4l) for my disc cloning needs. What I REALLY like are the ability to do a network copy of the image to an ftp server and the built in dd_rescue to rescue data from a failing hard drive. Unfrotunately g4l does a bit by bit copy of a drive which means it can take a while and it copies the full drive capacity (say for instance 80GB) even if you only have 5GB worth of information. Now, it can be compressed and if you massage the drive by defraging/filling empty space with ones before you start you can squeeze the image down pretty small, but… sometimes that’s a big task (I remember leaving one box writing zeros to the drive overnight to prepare the empty space for a g4l cloning.) Anyway…. I’ve run across clonezilla recently and am VERY impressed – it’s basically a wrapper around partimage – it will only copy the data component of a disc’s contents if it recognizes the filesystem (most linux filesystem types ext2/3/reiser plus ntfs and fat… it seems like a couple others too.) If it doesn’t recognize the filesystem it drops back to bit by bit mode which is nice. The only other thing I would want from it is better documentation and dd_rescue capabilities. (And maybe a fuse module to be able to image to/from ftp servers.) It supports several network approaches (samba/ssh) for writing/reading images over a network.
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HP Vista CLFS.SYS error
I’ve had a fun time this week dealing with a STRANGE Vista problem on an HP computer (I doubt it’s HP specific, but don’t know for certain.) The error goes like this… “A problem has been detected and Windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer.” “CLFS.sys” “Page_Fault_in_nonpaged_area” “If this is the first time you’ve seen this stop error screen….” And the stop error code looks like this “stop 0x00000050” The real problem is everything tried leads to the same place.
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Funny – list of reasons it doesn’t pay to be “the computer guy”…
I found this not too long ago at a techamok forum… copied here for convenience – not intended to slight the original author….
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Smartmontools on Windows – emailing warnings
For years I’ve been using smartmontools on my linux-based machines. What I’ve absolutely LOVED about it is the advance notice I’ve had of hard drive failures. Two consecutive Decembers I received an email from my server claiming that a drive was dying and had time to replace them rescuing the data. (Although the first one was falling to pieces as I copied.) If I had not know until I NOTICED a problem I would have likely lost a good amount of data and had a long rebuild process from various backups.
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Vmware server install on Ubuntu Dapper
I thought I had already posted this, but I looked the other day and didn’t find the article, so I’m posting it now… if it’s a duplicate, sorry… I’m still using Ubuntu’s Dapper Drake 6.06(.1) as a base install for many things… the Long term support idea fo rthe server “stuff” is somewhat reassuring and I don’t want to be chasing minor revision upgrades every 6 months. But, there is another reason, a lot of the installs I’ve done have been a base for VMWare server and there are some very good (and clear) how-to’s in that arena….howtoforge has a good walkthrough that I’ve used as a starting point….
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Symantec Internet Security 2007 antispyware protection off….
and you can’t turn it on without an error… Oh boy… last week I first saw this system and it was running less than the minimum amount of memory, so I thought that could be part of the issue. (It certainly made it slightly less than tolerable to work on.) So, now, with new memory installed. Norton still shows problems, Antispyware is off, phishing protection is off and the catch is when trying to enable either there’s a cryptic error message….”internal program error” and a string of numbers which is nowhere to be found in symantecs online support. But the online support does say to try and use symantecs utility to “fix” the problem and if that fails or is unavailable uninstall using the Norton remover that they provide as a free download and reinstall…. thanks Symantec…. (You might find the antivirus removal tool list helpful.)
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Emailing large files….
There are lot’s of ways to get a file from one place to another, emailing is the first that many think of. (For larger files I’ll usually just upload to a directory on the website and then email a link…) The problem with email is multiple…. 1)viruses exploit email as a delivery vehicle and so attachments are looked at with rightful suspicion…. and 2) the size of emails is usually capped SOMEWHERE along the way, my isp, your isp, etc…. Usually that cap is around 5-10MB There are other ways to get a big file from point a to point b – (don’t underestimate the bandwidth of the postal service and dvd-r’s….) One online alternative though is yousendit.com – you upload a file, tell who you want it sent to and it appears that they send a link via email so the recipient can download.
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Windows Vista upgrade clean install workaround
You had to know it would be a matter of time. Not long after I wrote about the limitations of Vista’s upgrade version I found this. First let me reset. Previous versions of Windows upgrade versions would allow you to do a “clean” install (format the drive) if you had the previous versions install media at hand. The install would stop to validate the install media and you could proceed. Very handy if recovering from a full hard drive failure, virus infestation, etc. Well the word was, Vista upgrade requires the previous OS version that you upgrade from to be installed on the Hard drive. This makes the rebuild process from such failures sound VERY nasty and tedious (read: just go buy a new pc…) However….