Still As Life

I was recently helping a friend move their XP install over to a new hard drive without having to re-install XP or any of their programs.

The situation is this, she previously had an 80gb drive with XP installed on it, and a secondary 250gb drive. She bought a 750gb drive and wanted to move the contents of the 250gb to the 750gb and then move Windows from the 80gb to the 250gb.

Normally I would just re-install everything if it was me moving the install, so I haven’t had to do this before.

First off we installed Partition Magic and formatted the 750gb drive and backed up the contents of both the 250gb drive and the 80gb drive to it.

Now that we had everything safely on the 750gb drive, I got to have full control of the computer to do my thing without her perched on my shoulder watching everything I do.

So, I wiped the 250gb drive and tried to copy the 80gb drive onto it as an 80gb partition. I tried this a couple of times with no luck. It kept informing me that the file system on the 80gb drive was corrupt. I ran chkdsk on it from the command line within Windows with the chkdsk /F switch to attempt to fix any errors. This confirmed that there were problems but it couldn’t fix them since many of the files were in use.

Booting into the recovery console with the Windows XP CD allowed me to run chkdsk /F again with none of the files being used and so it was able to run through and fix everything. I also ran chkdsk /R just to be sure that there was nothing else that /F didn’t fix and then booted back into Windows.

Running Partition Magic again I tried to copy the drive across to the new partition on the 250gb drive again. This time, it went over perfectly but alas there were still problems.

Partition Magic added the second Windows install to the boot manager, so it could be selected upon booting up. Regardless of which install you select, it would boot fine, however, if you unplugged the 80gb drive, it would fail to boot giving the error that <windows root>\system32]hal.dll was either corrupt or missing and to re-install.

Booting back into the 80gb install, it was obvious that hal.dll was there, so I copied it from the 80gb onto the 250gb and tried again. Same error.

It then occurred to me that perhaps the problem stemmed from the 250gb install being marked as L: instead of C:. So, booting back into the 80gb, I switched the drive letters around so the 250 was C: and the 80 was L:. Unfortunately, this didn’t seem to make any difference at all and the above error was still occurring when trying to boot to the 250gb install without the presence of the 80gb install.

That’s when I found some great information on what hal.dll is and what you can do about it if it is missing or corrupt. Most of what was on there was irrelevant to the problem I was having, but there was one piece of information that was just what was needed.

When running the recovery console after booting from the XP CD, enter the following to remove the Boot.ini file, fix the configuration and rebuild it:

1. Attrib -H -R -S C:\Boot.ini
2. DEL C:\Boot.ini
3. BootCfg /Rebuild
4. Fixboot

I had to do it slightly differently to this though. Unfortunately, I couldn’t apply all of the switches to the Boot.ini attributes at once. Thus I had to run through each of them individually like so:

1. Attrib -H C:\Boot.ini
2. Attrib -R C:\Boot.ini
3. Attrib -S C:\Boot.ini

After that though, everything worked a charm. I could boot straight into the Windows install on the 250gb drive without the presence of the install on the 80gb drive.

So that’s it, it’s really a lot simpler then I expected, though it did take a bit of fiddling around to get it right.

I understand that to do something similar in Vista could be a fair bit more complicated as Partition Magic does not yet work with Vista and the boot manager is setup differently.

I hope this helps someone else who’s having similar issues. Let me know how you go.

Popularity: 24% [?]

I received a completely unexpected present from a good friend of mine a couple of months ago, a new Palm Treo 750 running Windows Mobile 6.

I am quite fond of the design of the Palm Treo’s as they manage to incorporate an (almost) full keyboard along with a reasonable sized screen (240px * 240px) without the need to use a sliding keyboard. Sliding keyboards are prone to getting broken much easier in my experience, especially when I’m using them.

Unlike it’s predecessors and most other Palm phones, the Treo 750 runs Windows Mobile instead of Palm OS, and there have been some interesting things implemented in Windows Mobile by Palm. To my understanding, Palm have an exclusive license with Microsoft, allowing them to actually modify Windows Mobile 6.

One of the things I find the most useful is how it displays SMS and other messages in the form of a conversation, similar to how Gmail displays emails, and how Palm OS displays messages received. The addition of a search box on the Today screen is also extremely useful. Simply start to type a number or name and it will search your contacts and make suggestions as you type.

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Popularity: 42% [?]

I have noticed news and rumours popping up, as well as some releases on Apple’s website about the next version of OS X, due out next year, Snow Leopard. Just going off the information directly from Apple, Snow Leopard is sounding like it is going to be a very interesting release and as an unashamed Mac fan, I am eagerly awaiting it’s release.

One of the first things that popped into my head when I saw what it was being called was that surely they could have picked a different cat since they used Leopard for 10.5, but upon thinking about it further, Snow Leopard is actually perfect for it, hopefully when I’m done, you will see why.

Apple says:

“Taking a break from adding new features, Snow Leopard — scheduled to ship in about a year — builds on Leopard’s enormous innovations by delivering a new generation of core software technologies that will streamline Mac OS X, enhance its performance, and set new standards for quality.”

So what’s the big fuss?

Microsoft Exchange Support

Well, one of the biggest things is full Microsoft Exchange support through Apple’s Mail, Address Book and iCal applications. As a user of Microsoft Exchange for my email, calendar and contacts on my desktop and Palm Treo 750, being able to sync my MacBook Pro with my Exchange Server would complete my work communications suite. I imagine there are plenty of other people in the same shoes as myself there, and I have no doubt that it is holding many people back that would otherwise be more interested in the Macintosh platform. Yes, there are other options available that I have talked about previously, such as using Kerio Mail Server instead of Microsoft Exchange Server. However, in a situation where Microsoft Exchange is already installed, this is not really a viable option.

I have noticed that Mail in Os X Leopard has an option to access an Exchange Server, but I have not tried this as of yet.

What else is there?

Open Compute Language

The other thing in Snow Leopard that is quite a big addition is what Apple is calling “OpenCL”, or Open Compute Language. I’m sure by now a lot of tech savvy people have come across the concept of using the processing power of graphics processing unit’s for general purpose processing as well as graphics processing. OpenCL is meant to allow development in this area. From the Apple website (server) (and personal), OpenCL is:

“Another powerful Snow Leopard technology, OpenCL (Open Computer Library), makes it possible for developers to efficiently tap the vast gigaflops of computing power currently locked up in the graphics processing unit (GPU). With GPUs approaching processing speeds of a trillion operations a second, they’re capable of considerably more than just drawing pictures. OpenCL takes that power and redirects it for use in high-performance computing applications like genomics, video encoding, signal processing, and simulations of physical and financial models.”

Grand Central and 64 Bit

Now, the other things listed on the personal, or client usage OS X site are not necessarily spectacular, such as mentioning 64 bit and multi-core support through Grand Central, seeing as how OS X has been 64 bit and with options running on multiple cores for years, but with all the confusion surrounding Vista and it’s 32 and 64 bit versions, it doesn’t hurt to re-establish that OS X is 64 bit and every computer is now running a multi-core CPU. What is interesting about these things though is the improvements Apple are making in the 64 bit field. With up to 16 terrabytes of RAM supported in Snow Leopard, is this paving the way for a new breed of Mac that could potentially run entirely from RAM rather than the slower hard drives? The MacBook Air has a solid state drive as an option, it would make sense to start offering them in other computers if the capacity can be brought to a sufficient level. With the vast amounts of power available in graphics processors and multi-core CPU’s (currently up to 8 cores and 4 GPU’s in Mac Pro’s), it makes sense that the biggest bottleneck is going to be the 7,200 rpm or 10,000 rpm hard drives.

Grand Central is meant to make the entirety of the operating system “multicore aware”, which I assume means that every part of OS X will be capable of efficient multi-threading, allowing them to run faster. I have seen it indicated and theorised in a few places, that Grand Central will be, or should be, providing a more efficient way of controlling multiple threads. This is particularly important as the more cores and threads you have running, the more overheads there are. So you can only add so many more cores before there is so much overhead that multiple cores simply won’t help. There is a good read about this over on ZDNet by Robin Harris. Providing a solution to this problem that is easily accessible by developers would be an excellent advance, regardless of what your preferred operating system is. If Apple hit it with Snow Leopard, it will have to push Microsoft to come up with a solution as well in time for Windows 7, if they don’t then there needs to be something else that can provide a significant performance boost on similar hardware.

I expect that in Snow Leopard, with the addition of OpenCL, that multi-core functionality on Mac’s will natively include GPU’s as well as CPU’s and processing across the two+ units as well as improving the 64 bit performance to potentially allow RAM to be used in place of hard drives. There are already solutions available that allow you to add RAM to riser cards that can be used as a small boot drive or swap drive, though they are very limited. It makes sense to extend this to allow maximum data access speeds for the processors.

What else is there?

Reduced Footprint

A reduced footprint is meant to be coming along. This is marketed as a reduction in the hard drive space used by the operating system, which grew in Leopard. This is always a nice thing seeing as how I like to have as much hard drive space as I can get my hands on, and I’m sure others will agree. However, the system footprint or a program footprint generally refers to how much RAM it utilises in order to run. Given the hints dropped in the 64 bit section relating to more free RAM, I hope that the reduced footprint will also reduce the amount of RAM used by the operating system, both when idling and under load. Though as it is, the RAM usage is nothing compared to Vista.

Compatibility

Unfortunately for those still using Mac’s based on the old IBM CPU’s, I have seen it mentioned in a few places that Snow Leopard will not be a universal release and the system requirements list an Intel-based Mac.

However, these system requirements are thus far only for the developers preview, so it may yet be available as a universal release.

No doubt there will be more than just what is being marketed at this stage, but thus far this is looking to be a very exciting release. What do you think?

Popularity: 64% [?]

I had an assignment due on Monday for KKB210: Computational Arts 1, where I had to create 3 computational art works. This has kept me pretty busy over the past week or so, especially since I had another assignment due on Tuesday, just a 1500-1800 word essay fortunately, so it didn’t take up too much time.

For full details on everything I’ve done for this assignment, have a look at my computational arts blog. I’ve learned a lot about various programming environments and languages in relation to computational arts and live-coding. In particular, I’ve found the Processing Development Environment and Quartz Composer quite interesting and fun to work with. Of course, Quartz Composer isn’t a programming environment, but a patching tool.

I have always been particularly interested in fractals and other forms of digital art, so the computational arts subjects at uni were particularly appealing to me, and thus far have been exactly what I was looking for.

I have made a few fractal animations previously, including one for my NSW Higher School Certificate that I synced up with music. On my second fractal animation, I created the music for it myself instead of using an existing piece. Using Quartz Composer and Processing, I am able to make very similar effects, though not fractals, and have them render and animate in real-time. Two of my artworks for KKB210 are actually live rendered animations based on audio input. You can have a look at them here and here. They are both available under feel free to edit them, redistribute them etc, just take note that it is an attribution, non-commercial, share-a-like license (full details are available on http://matthewbrown.net.au), so you do have say where you got it from if you are re-distributing it.

Now, while I am a novice at the whole live-rendered animations to music and the like, I am happy to do some for events where it is appropriate. Let me know at matt at stillaslife dot com.

Popularity: 48% [?]

Since upgrading to Windows Vista, I have found more problems with the Vodafone software for the 3G broadband modems.

On Windows XP or Mac OS X, when you unplug the modem without disconnecting the connection first, it will act the same way as if you unplug an ethernet cable and unplug a USB device.

On XP, the network connection changes to a disconnected icon, it makes a disconnected USB sound and says the device has been disconnected. The Vodafone software then displays the “Searching for Hardware”  message.

On OS X, the network connection simply disconnects

However, on Windows Vista it complicates it entirely. If you unplug the modem without first disconnecting the connection, you have to reboot the computer before you can use the 3G modem again.

When you unplug it, it performs the normal disconnected USB notifications, however, it doesn’t change the network status to disconnected, and the Vodafone software just sits there, counting the time connected. If you press disconnect, it does nothing, if you try to close it, it does nothing, even forcing it closed and reopening it doesn’t fix it, it straight up starts counting the connected time again.

Even if you manually disable the network connection it keeps doing this.

Plugging the modem back in doesn’t change anything, you simply cannot press the connect button again because it will not come back up until you reboot.

I am using the latest version of the Vodafone software that is meant to be Vista compatible.

Vodafone have been no help either, the software works, it just does not work correctly unless you remember to disconnect it before unplugging the modem.

Popularity: 52% [?]