My iPod's Back! w00t!
So it does seem that it was the file system and partitioning that was causing all that hell. After I deleted the partitions, and formatted the drive as Fat32, the iPod Updater worked just fine.
I was a little worried; as the formatting was nearing the end, I got a message, "Windows was unable to format the drive." I was dreading that I would attempt to use the iPod Updater only to find that it would get another "Could not mount iPod" error. I was so glad when I saw that blue progress bar slowly inching its way across my screen.
12/26/05
12/25/05
Ever feel like today just isn't your day for technology?
I think today is one of those days for me...
Since that last post, I've had TWO technical issues... One was small, and I just averted the issue, the second was major, and I spent an hour researching and troubleshooting.
My first problem, the easy one, was the fact that my HTML code in my previous post was funkie... Blogger sent me an error message: "Cannot post: tag < center > has no closing tag." Now, there was only one center tag and one following center-closing tag. There's no reason that I can see that my tag was open, but I just added another center-closing tag, and it posted right away. Problem averted.
My second problem was a problem that has persisted me between different operating systems and have (now) even had different solutions. Sticking to the most recent incident, I when I earlier decided to reboot Suzi-LNX into XP, I forgot to shutdown Thunderbird before actually shutting down. I usually don't have a problem when I do this, but this time I did. When I opened Thunderbird, I was prompted "Please select a profile." The only profile listed was "default," and selecting default and selecting "Start Thunderbird" would cause Thunderbird to respond with
Upon searching mozillaZine, I found a lot of talk about making sure that there isn't any remnants of Thunderbird running in memory (mostly a Windows error, that I have had before, and is a simple to fix with an "end task" command) or delete the file "parent.lock." I looked though everything, but there was no parent.lock or even a parent. file... I was getting quite frustrated. After reading 8 pages of mozillaZine, I finally found a link that was quite useful: mozillaZine: Profile in Use.
To summarize, there is one key point that was neglected from the majority of the forums:
iPod
Currently, it is still formatting. Damn USB 1.1. It's getting closer to the end of formatting, but it still has a ways to go. And the sad thing is, I don't have a clue if this will work or not.
I think today is one of those days for me...
Since that last post, I've had TWO technical issues... One was small, and I just averted the issue, the second was major, and I spent an hour researching and troubleshooting.
My first problem, the easy one, was the fact that my HTML code in my previous post was funkie... Blogger sent me an error message: "Cannot post: tag < center > has no closing tag." Now, there was only one center tag and one following center-closing tag. There's no reason that I can see that my tag was open, but I just added another center-closing tag, and it posted right away. Problem averted.
My second problem was a problem that has persisted me between different operating systems and have (now) even had different solutions. Sticking to the most recent incident, I when I earlier decided to reboot Suzi-LNX into XP, I forgot to shutdown Thunderbird before actually shutting down. I usually don't have a problem when I do this, but this time I did. When I opened Thunderbird, I was prompted "Please select a profile." The only profile listed was "default," and selecting default and selecting "Start Thunderbird" would cause Thunderbird to respond with
Cannot use the profile ''Default'' because it is already in use. Please choose another profile or create a new one. Upon searching mozillaZine, I found a lot of talk about making sure that there isn't any remnants of Thunderbird running in memory (mostly a Windows error, that I have had before, and is a simple to fix with an "end task" command) or delete the file "parent.lock." I looked though everything, but there was no parent.lock or even a parent. file... I was getting quite frustrated. After reading 8 pages of mozillaZine, I finally found a link that was quite useful: mozillaZine: Profile in Use.
To summarize, there is one key point that was neglected from the majority of the forums:
The application may have shut down abnormally, leaving the lock in place. To fix this, delete the file named "parent.lock" (Windows), "lock" (Linux), or ".parentlock" (Mac OS X) in your profile folder.Grrr, that seems like something they would have mentioned... Although, I only found one Linux guy having the same problem as I (out of the posts that I read).
iPod
Currently, it is still formatting. Damn USB 1.1. It's getting closer to the end of formatting, but it still has a ways to go. And the sad thing is, I don't have a clue if this will work or not.
Sound The Alarms!
I'm having technical difficulties... With my iPod.
Alright, so maybe it wasn't the best idea to try to install iPod Linux to it when I was pretty sure that it wouldn't work, but I was adventurous, and now, for the past two hours, I've been trying to undo what I did.
My iPod, Saji, a 5G iPod with video 30 GB, was quite the christmas gift from my parents. I totally loved the thing, although in the infinite wisdom of Apple, it's difficult to play video on this iPod with video. As a matter of fact, of the 6 or so file formats that I tried to transfer to the iPod, none worked. I was quite annoyed by this fact, so I looked for a solution on the internet... And what did I come across you might ask? One thing: iPod Linux.
I decided to follow the iPod Linux Installer from a Linux Computer instructions, which was a lot of work, and when I rebooted the iPod, I found that the iPod didn't detect Linux nor Apple's iPod OS. At this point, I hooked the iPod up to my old Windows 2000 box (via a USB 1.1 port... oohhh, so slow) and used iPod Updater to reinstall the iPod OS.
It was at that time when I decided to follow a different set of instructions: iPod Linux Installer from a Windows Computer - but once again, at reboot, the iPod showed an error message saying that it cannot find the OS and I should go to http://www.apple.com/support/ipod: the iPod serious error message. I, having seen this error before (with the previous installation attempt), didn't think much of it, accept that the iPod didn't have a working edition of Linux installed to it.
I tried to rerun the installer to check a few things, but this time, it said that it couldn't access the iPod. And this is where my problems started to take form. I tried to run the iPod Updater to revert to the original iPod OS, but it said that it couldn't mount the iPod. This is bad. I returned the iPod to linux, only to find that linux couldn't mount it either. I decided that it may be in my best interest to install the iPod Updater to my Windows XP machine (which has never been connected to the iPod, nor did it have any Apple software installed to it). When I hooked the iPod up to the XP box, I was able to get the iPod to mount *w00t!* or so I thought.... I told the Updater to revert to the default OS, but as the iPod Updater worked on installing the iPod OS, it once again got the "Could not mount iPod" error.
I again returned the iPod to Linux, this time, realizing something, the reason that I couldn't access
At this point, I was actually starting to ponder if I could return the iPod to the store to get another one or not. I was thinking, this may be beyond what I can repair... And to me, that is quite odd! A software error is always fixable... Rewrite code, use new code, reinstall the program, etc... There's always a way to fix broken programs, as long as you have the program or the source code, it's possible. But this was just baffling me... And I knew what it was too, something happened when I used the iPod Linux Installer from a Windows Computer... I wasn't sure what it was, but something happened with that installer that freaked the iPod out. I wasn't getting an error that made me think, "Awww hell, the hardware has failed" or anything like that, it just seemed like the iPod was having some serious OS trouble, and I just needed to restore to the original OS to at least get the MP3 abilities back... I didn't even care about the videos anymore... I just didn't want a $300 paper-weight.
I was desperate... But I thought that I really needed access to both a Linux computer and a Windows machine, so I returned to SUSE, and began working with the iPod. A thought occurred to me as I was working with the iPod... What if those Linux partitions are still bothering it? I took a look at my sick little Saji under
Haha! I thought to myself, that first partition, that's really small, is thwarting the iPod OS reinstall! I figured there are two possibilities... 1) The iPod Updater was trying to install to a partition that was too small or 2) the iPod wasn't reformatting the partition, and wasn't able to mount a partition that was of some "odd Linux format." So, I did what I thought would be the quick-and-dirty way to get my Saji back up and running: trash all the partitions (in Linux) and attempt to run the iPod Updater again.
When it once again received the "Cannot mount iPod" error, I was confused and peeved! The damn thing was still not working. But I quickly came up with another possible solution: what if the iPod needed a file system? The iPod Updater doesn't seem to actually be formatting anything, so I decided to try out installing Fat32 to the iPod in Linux, and then returning the iPod to Windows to see how it worked out.
This time, I got an odd message from Windows: "Drive I: is not formatted, format it now? [YES][NO]" I logged in as admin and told it to format it... Fat32... All one partition. Full format.
It's currently somewhere around 25% and it's been going for about an hour now. There's still a lot of work to be done on this iPod, and I'm still worried about it, but at least it's doing something. More about the iPod coming soon, hopefully good news.
Pleeds with the IT, Apple, and iPod gods
I'm having technical difficulties... With my iPod.
Alright, so maybe it wasn't the best idea to try to install iPod Linux to it when I was pretty sure that it wouldn't work, but I was adventurous, and now, for the past two hours, I've been trying to undo what I did.
My iPod, Saji, a 5G iPod with video 30 GB, was quite the christmas gift from my parents. I totally loved the thing, although in the infinite wisdom of Apple, it's difficult to play video on this iPod with video. As a matter of fact, of the 6 or so file formats that I tried to transfer to the iPod, none worked. I was quite annoyed by this fact, so I looked for a solution on the internet... And what did I come across you might ask? One thing: iPod Linux.
I decided to follow the iPod Linux Installer from a Linux Computer instructions, which was a lot of work, and when I rebooted the iPod, I found that the iPod didn't detect Linux nor Apple's iPod OS. At this point, I hooked the iPod up to my old Windows 2000 box (via a USB 1.1 port... oohhh, so slow) and used iPod Updater to reinstall the iPod OS.
It was at that time when I decided to follow a different set of instructions: iPod Linux Installer from a Windows Computer - but once again, at reboot, the iPod showed an error message saying that it cannot find the OS and I should go to http://www.apple.com/support/ipod: the iPod serious error message. I, having seen this error before (with the previous installation attempt), didn't think much of it, accept that the iPod didn't have a working edition of Linux installed to it.
I tried to rerun the installer to check a few things, but this time, it said that it couldn't access the iPod. And this is where my problems started to take form. I tried to run the iPod Updater to revert to the original iPod OS, but it said that it couldn't mount the iPod. This is bad. I returned the iPod to linux, only to find that linux couldn't mount it either. I decided that it may be in my best interest to install the iPod Updater to my Windows XP machine (which has never been connected to the iPod, nor did it have any Apple software installed to it). When I hooked the iPod up to the XP box, I was able to get the iPod to mount *w00t!* or so I thought.... I told the Updater to revert to the default OS, but as the iPod Updater worked on installing the iPod OS, it once again got the "Could not mount iPod" error.
I again returned the iPod to Linux, this time, realizing something, the reason that I couldn't access
/dev/sdb, the iPod device, is because the iPod wasn't on /dev/sdb... It had changed... This connection, it had become /dev/sdd -- it seems that each reinstall of the OS prompted the device to mount under a different device... With this, I decided that I would delete all the partitions and hook up the iPod to my best machine: Suzi-XP. Yes, Suzi-XP (not Suzi-LNX). Suzi-XP is the same computer as Suzi-LNX, just booted into XP instead of SUSE. But even in Suzi-XP, I was getting the same thing as my older XP box, it would allow me to revert, but as it tried to install the original OS, it once again got the "Couldn not mount iPod" error. This is getting annoying.At this point, I was actually starting to ponder if I could return the iPod to the store to get another one or not. I was thinking, this may be beyond what I can repair... And to me, that is quite odd! A software error is always fixable... Rewrite code, use new code, reinstall the program, etc... There's always a way to fix broken programs, as long as you have the program or the source code, it's possible. But this was just baffling me... And I knew what it was too, something happened when I used the iPod Linux Installer from a Windows Computer... I wasn't sure what it was, but something happened with that installer that freaked the iPod out. I wasn't getting an error that made me think, "Awww hell, the hardware has failed" or anything like that, it just seemed like the iPod was having some serious OS trouble, and I just needed to restore to the original OS to at least get the MP3 abilities back... I didn't even care about the videos anymore... I just didn't want a $300 paper-weight.
I was desperate... But I thought that I really needed access to both a Linux computer and a Windows machine, so I returned to SUSE, and began working with the iPod. A thought occurred to me as I was working with the iPod... What if those Linux partitions are still bothering it? I took a look at my sick little Saji under
fdisk, and found three partitions... One marked as none, one marked as Fat32, and the other marked as Linux. Haha! I thought to myself, that first partition, that's really small, is thwarting the iPod OS reinstall! I figured there are two possibilities... 1) The iPod Updater was trying to install to a partition that was too small or 2) the iPod wasn't reformatting the partition, and wasn't able to mount a partition that was of some "odd Linux format." So, I did what I thought would be the quick-and-dirty way to get my Saji back up and running: trash all the partitions (in Linux) and attempt to run the iPod Updater again.
When it once again received the "Cannot mount iPod" error, I was confused and peeved! The damn thing was still not working. But I quickly came up with another possible solution: what if the iPod needed a file system? The iPod Updater doesn't seem to actually be formatting anything, so I decided to try out installing Fat32 to the iPod in Linux, and then returning the iPod to Windows to see how it worked out.
This time, I got an odd message from Windows: "Drive I: is not formatted, format it now? [YES][NO]" I logged in as admin and told it to format it... Fat32... All one partition. Full format.
It's currently somewhere around 25% and it's been going for about an hour now. There's still a lot of work to be done on this iPod, and I'm still worried about it, but at least it's doing something. More about the iPod coming soon, hopefully good news.
12/21/05
24 Hours Later...
Is Love
Welcome to KDE! w00t. It's still 3.4, but that's okay, although annoying... 3.5 was released two weeks ago, and should have been in portage by now! But, 3.4 works.
I only had one minor problem with KDE, I was having some odd issues modifying my
After KDE finished emerging, I emerged amarok and fluxbox. Quick and simple installs. From there, I decided to go ahead with Gnome, and that's what the system is currently working on. It should be another day or so before that's done. And even then, I think I didn't have the right
But, I have actually started KDE, and it works just fine. I found out that it's got some audio issues (which I'll have to figure out) but it seems to be stable, although it also seems to be fairly empty right now... There's not much software installed on it. I should get that up and running here soon though, but it may be a bit before I can do that (gotta wait for Gnome to finish!).
Updated:
Specifics for Today!
Multipart sections have completed projects marked in italics and the INPROGRESS tag.
Is Love
Welcome to KDE! w00t. It's still 3.4, but that's okay, although annoying... 3.5 was released two weeks ago, and should have been in portage by now! But, 3.4 works.
I only had one minor problem with KDE, I was having some odd issues modifying my
.xinitrcd file (it should be noted that this problem had nothing to do with KDE itself)... I'm not sure why I was having trouble, but the file just never created... It's like I was trying to save to a write protected directory or something. I eventually got it, and things moved on well from there.After KDE finished emerging, I emerged amarok and fluxbox. Quick and simple installs. From there, I decided to go ahead with Gnome, and that's what the system is currently working on. It should be another day or so before that's done. And even then, I think I didn't have the right
USE flags in for Gnome, so I may have to go and fix that --which would cause me to have to recompile Gnome (best case) or have to recompile the entire system (worst case). Either way, it'll be awhile before I am able to do much with the system. But, I have actually started KDE, and it works just fine. I found out that it's got some audio issues (which I'll have to figure out) but it seems to be stable, although it also seems to be fairly empty right now... There's not much software installed on it. I should get that up and running here soon though, but it may be a bit before I can do that (gotta wait for Gnome to finish!).
Updated:
- [DONE] Get Xorg up and running, specifically the damn mouse.
- [INPROGRESS] Get a desktop manager installed, and then the other two (total: KDE, Fluxbox, Gnome)
- [ ] Update portage (first, find the instructions on how to do that)
- [INPROGRESS] Get specific software installed (alsa, amarok, gtkpod, OOo 2)
- [ ] Configure the system for appearance
Multipart sections have completed projects marked in italics and the INPROGRESS tag.
12/20/05
Chug-a-lug, chug-a-lug...
Well, I got Xorg configured on Raku - w00t. I also found out what was wrong with my display manager... (that was what my angry post was this morning) the new
Still, I feel that using the
On a side note, I have no clue if closing the
Updated Specifics for Today
Well, I got Xorg configured on Raku - w00t. I also found out what was wrong with my display manager... (that was what my angry post was this morning) the new
nvidia driver doesn't support (among other versions) the Riva TNT2 cards anymore. When I told Gentoo to use the nvidia driver instead of the nv (bare-bones nvidia driver) the driver threw an exception -- right out the window. There may be a way to fix this, perhaps by using an older version of the nvidia driver, or something. I'll have to do a lot more research on that before I get a decent answer though.Still, I feel that using the
nv driver is more of a "workaround" than a solution... I really want that nv driver up and running.On a side note, I have no clue if closing the
SSH session will cause gentoo to stop compiling KDE... It's been going for around four hours now, and it seems a little pointless to leave SSH open. But, I remember having some odd issues with KSSH and VNC connections... Once the session for KSSH or VNC were closed, they would lose all the data that I was working on; quite annoying, and I definitely don't want to risk that on an compilation of KDE (btw: I did an emerge kde command, so it should be getting all/most of KDE at the same time... This could go on for a day or two).Updated Specifics for Today
- [DONE] Get Xorg up and running, specifically the damn mouse.
- [IN PROGRESS] Get a desktop manager installed, and then the other two (total: KDE, Fluxbox, Gnome)
- [ ] Update portage (first, find the instructions on how to do that)
- [ ] Get specific software installed (alsa, amarok, gtkpod, OOo 2)
- [ ] Configure the system for appearance
Generation Next, Generation Next... Generation!
Okay, so that was dorky. But it gets worse...
Yesterday, I got bored. So I decided to do something... Mwahahahaha. GENTOO LINUX! I realized that I had a spare system just sitting around that I kept saying, "Ya know, one day, I'll install my MS Windows Server 2003 Enterprise to it and play with it." But, once I got VMWear running on Suzi-LNX, there was little point in doing that. But there was one thing that I didn't want to do in VMWare, and that was the installation of Gentoo.
Now, there has always been this love/hate relationship between Gentoo and I... Gentoo is a pain in the ass to install. It's not just "text based" - oh no, text based installers I can do, Gentoo is "install from source" and "customization centric" which basically means that it's not only a pain in the ass to install, but it also takes forever to install.
Yesterday, I spent the entire day getting my base system installed. Thankfully, I was able to use SSH for most of it, and just sit at Suzi-LNX watching anime and building the system at the same time. Today should be even easier, since I'll be compiling a lot of stuff, which means "no user input" for a while... As long as I didn't screw up the base system, things should be fine. But if I did, I might not notice the problems until well into the compilation process.
Specifics for Today
Not all of these tasks may get done today, probably not even half, since I'll have to compile all that crap, but I should be able to get some of it done.
Okay, so that was dorky. But it gets worse...
Yesterday, I got bored. So I decided to do something... Mwahahahaha. GENTOO LINUX! I realized that I had a spare system just sitting around that I kept saying, "Ya know, one day, I'll install my MS Windows Server 2003 Enterprise to it and play with it." But, once I got VMWear running on Suzi-LNX, there was little point in doing that. But there was one thing that I didn't want to do in VMWare, and that was the installation of Gentoo.
Now, there has always been this love/hate relationship between Gentoo and I... Gentoo is a pain in the ass to install. It's not just "text based" - oh no, text based installers I can do, Gentoo is "install from source" and "customization centric" which basically means that it's not only a pain in the ass to install, but it also takes forever to install.
Yesterday, I spent the entire day getting my base system installed. Thankfully, I was able to use SSH for most of it, and just sit at Suzi-LNX watching anime and building the system at the same time. Today should be even easier, since I'll be compiling a lot of stuff, which means "no user input" for a while... As long as I didn't screw up the base system, things should be fine. But if I did, I might not notice the problems until well into the compilation process.
Specifics for Today
- [DONE] Get Xorg up and running, specifically the damn mouse.
- [ ] Get a desktop manager installed, and then the other two (total: KDE, Fluxbox, Gnome)
- [ ] Update portage (first, find the instructions on how to do that)
- [ ] Get specific software installed (alsa, amarok, gtkpod, OOo 2)
- [ ] Configure the system for appearance
Not all of these tasks may get done today, probably not even half, since I'll have to compile all that crap, but I should be able to get some of it done.
12/15/05
Miki-ni, where are you!?!
Alright, even though it is a bit of a mystery as to how this all happened, but when I rebooted Miki-ni from the
I couldn't even find evidence of any problem with the system in the Event Viewer… Nothing at all! There were probably half a dozen errors listed in there from the times I attempted to boot the system and got a BSoD, but each of those errors were all "
Linux?! Why have you forsaken me?!?
Just a day or so ago, I posted about how "Linux shall inherit the Earth" because the OS has been treating me so well for the past while. Well, today I go in there, unlock the machine, and guess what? Nothing was working! KDE still looked normal, but actually using the OS was nearly impossible. At first, I was fooled, I didn't really think much of the trouble, I had started OOo Writer and was typing up an entry for LJ when I found that Amarok wouldn't start. Upon troubleshooting the problem, I found that it was a problem that couldn't be resolved easily:
Hmmm, another mystery of the computing world.
On a side note, I still haven't got Sims2 Nightlife to work in Linux… I'm not sure why… I can't seem to get the thing to allow me to install The Sims 2 (it can't find CD 2 once I insert it) and for some reason, the game just stalls if I just execute Cedega for my copy of The Sims 2 Nightlife that I copied over from my Windows directory. So, for now, it seems that I'm out of luck with playing Sims 2 in linux. Maybe I'll eventually figure it out (probably by spending a day or two looking though forums and what-not).
Alright, even though it is a bit of a mystery as to how this all happened, but when I rebooted Miki-ni from the
chkdsk and Avast boot-time scan, the system restarted just fine, as if there was never any problem at all.I couldn't even find evidence of any problem with the system in the Event Viewer… Nothing at all! There were probably half a dozen errors listed in there from the times I attempted to boot the system and got a BSoD, but each of those errors were all "
such-and-such a service failed to start" errors, that basically mean that something happened to the system that the computer didn't notice, but is causing other stuff to fail. Grrr, I suppose that I may never really know the cause of the failure, but one of my friends on LiveJournal said that it might be a harddrive failure, although I don't see any of the other typical symptoms of an HDD failure, such as having chkdsk errors, or CRC errors or corrupted files, or something along those lines.Linux?! Why have you forsaken me?!?
Just a day or so ago, I posted about how "Linux shall inherit the Earth" because the OS has been treating me so well for the past while. Well, today I go in there, unlock the machine, and guess what? Nothing was working! KDE still looked normal, but actually using the OS was nearly impossible. At first, I was fooled, I didn't really think much of the trouble, I had started OOo Writer and was typing up an entry for LJ when I found that Amarok wouldn't start. Upon troubleshooting the problem, I found that it was a problem that couldn't be resolved easily:
- amaroK repeatedly wouldn't start
- amaroK was in memory about six times over, using KsysGuard I ended all the tasks, but amaroK still wouldn't start
- Attempted to save my LJ entry (that was being edited in OOo Writer) but wasn't able to bring up the save dialog box
- Attempted to access the KDE calendar, it appeared, but wouldn't close
- Attempted to close Thunderbird, but wasn't able to get it to close
- Logged off the system, which took longer than it should have but was a success
- Attempted to logon to the system, but the logon failed. I let it run for about 5 minutes before giving up on it and using TTY2 under root to execute
shutdown -h now - After the shutdown, I left the system off for about two minutes before powering it back on. The file system wasn't clean and had to replay a few items, but other than that, it seemed to be okay. Logon to KDE was successful and amaroK played the my playlist just fine.
Hmmm, another mystery of the computing world.
On a side note, I still haven't got Sims2 Nightlife to work in Linux… I'm not sure why… I can't seem to get the thing to allow me to install The Sims 2 (it can't find CD 2 once I insert it) and for some reason, the game just stalls if I just execute Cedega for my copy of The Sims 2 Nightlife that I copied over from my Windows directory. So, for now, it seems that I'm out of luck with playing Sims 2 in linux. Maybe I'll eventually figure it out (probably by spending a day or two looking though forums and what-not).
12/14/05
And Linux shall inherit the Earth…
Well, a while ago a friend of mine was telling me about the benefits of using Cedega TransGaming in Linux. The whole conversation came about from talking about uptime, and how my uptime is lower than what it could be in SUSE just because I have to reboot to play video games (which I rarely do play, but I do play them enough that I have had to reboot my machine for it once or twice a month). So, I got talked into getting Cedega.
I'm working on getting the Sims2 to work in Linux, but I like to use mounted ISO images to play my games, and I just happen to only have NRG images of Sims2. Grrr. After a few hours of working with Nero, and attempting to create a new image, this time an ISO, I gave up. All I could make was NRG images. I was about to give up and use the disc, but I though: "Hey, haven't I seen and NRG to ISO converter in Linux?" and yes, I did. It was in KPackage (apt-get GUI), and I installed that right away. I'm going to experiment with that here pretty soon.
But, before I did all of that, I tried to run Sims2 by just using cedega, and it seemed to have worked. It didn't start all the way, but it did bring up the "Sims2" logo to start the game. I think it is working correctly, I just need to get a CD going for it, and maybe a few other minor elements configured before I can really test out my games.
And what the heck is up with Miki-ni?
Well, I'm still working with Miki-ni… Miki is still down for repairs, and is currently running a boot-time anti-virus scan (avast!). I also ran a
It will still be a while before I can tell what is wrong with the system, but I'll keep working on it. I talked to Andrew earlier today, and he said that there was a problem with a recent update that he did to ZoneAlarm… That his mom had told him that when she got on the computer that morning the PC had said that "Windows has recovered from a serious error" - and when he sent the data into Microsoft, he got a response saying that the problem was a recent update from ZoneAlarm. Oddly enough, I also have just recently upgraded ZoneAlarm on that machine, and each time the computer has crashed (accept for the first time) the computer has crashed as it was being logged on.
Possible solution? Perhaps. But, we'll have to wait an see about that. More on the ongoing story of Miki-Ni's KMODE_EXECPTION_NOT_HANDLED blue screen fiasco to come!
Well, a while ago a friend of mine was telling me about the benefits of using Cedega TransGaming in Linux. The whole conversation came about from talking about uptime, and how my uptime is lower than what it could be in SUSE just because I have to reboot to play video games (which I rarely do play, but I do play them enough that I have had to reboot my machine for it once or twice a month). So, I got talked into getting Cedega.
I'm working on getting the Sims2 to work in Linux, but I like to use mounted ISO images to play my games, and I just happen to only have NRG images of Sims2. Grrr. After a few hours of working with Nero, and attempting to create a new image, this time an ISO, I gave up. All I could make was NRG images. I was about to give up and use the disc, but I though: "Hey, haven't I seen and NRG to ISO converter in Linux?" and yes, I did. It was in KPackage (apt-get GUI), and I installed that right away. I'm going to experiment with that here pretty soon.
But, before I did all of that, I tried to run Sims2 by just using cedega, and it seemed to have worked. It didn't start all the way, but it did bring up the "Sims2" logo to start the game. I think it is working correctly, I just need to get a CD going for it, and maybe a few other minor elements configured before I can really test out my games.
And what the heck is up with Miki-ni?
Well, I'm still working with Miki-ni… Miki is still down for repairs, and is currently running a boot-time anti-virus scan (avast!). I also ran a
chkdsk on C: which returned a clean file system, accept for a single 4k cluster that was bad, and I believe that it was repaired.It will still be a while before I can tell what is wrong with the system, but I'll keep working on it. I talked to Andrew earlier today, and he said that there was a problem with a recent update that he did to ZoneAlarm… That his mom had told him that when she got on the computer that morning the PC had said that "Windows has recovered from a serious error" - and when he sent the data into Microsoft, he got a response saying that the problem was a recent update from ZoneAlarm. Oddly enough, I also have just recently upgraded ZoneAlarm on that machine, and each time the computer has crashed (accept for the first time) the computer has crashed as it was being logged on.
Possible solution? Perhaps. But, we'll have to wait an see about that. More on the ongoing story of Miki-Ni's KMODE_EXECPTION_NOT_HANDLED blue screen fiasco to come!
12/13/05
Wow, it's been over a moth since I last updated. Well, I guess it's a bit understandable, since in the past month, there hasn't been much going on in my IT world... Until today that is.
To bring everyone up to speed, during the last two weeks, I've been prepping for classroom exams (not Microsoft exams) - which I seem to have passed my classes, but I'm not quite sure what grade I'm getting yet. that'll probably be sometime next week.
I have also started to review some material for the 70-270 exam that I want to take sometime here. But, I've only been watching some 270 prep videos, and even that is pretty sparingly.
But, all of this has been going on for a while now... So why would I be posting now? Well... I was working in SUSE and I saw that my HDD activity light on my Windows 2000 machine (Miki-ni) was solid. Figuring that it was just a virus or spyware scan, I let it be. But, after about an hour or two with no change, I decided to VNC into the machine and see what's up. However, I couldn't VNC. I got a "Unable to connect" error. I decided to just KVM over there, but all I got was a black screen (power save wouldn't disengage) after trying and trying to get a signal --and only getting that little blinking green light, I decided to do hard reboot of the machine. Windows was starting normally, I even started to log into the machine, and that's when it happened:
I did a little research (using SUSE) about "KMODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED" errors, and the first link that came up was a Microsoft Knowledge Base article about a virus that was cause KMODE blue screen errors. There were other articles, almost all MS-KB articles, but since almost all of them had to do with a driver update failure or virus, I'm pretty worried, especially since I haven't touched my drivers sine the installation of "Ni" almost a year ago.
I'm also a little worried because when I booted into safe mode, and started working, I kept getting "
*cries* (more updates coming soon on this topic)
Update [ Dec. 13 @ 7:45 AM]
After I booted into safe mode - command prompt only, I was able to work just fine. And since I was running an antivirus scan on my HDD, without error, I think that the "Unknown Hard Error" may not have had anything to do with the hardware on the system at all.
Moving right along though... I ran a full Avast! scan of the system, and used
Avast! did report something odd... A few of my compressed files are marked as decompression bombs. I had herd of this term in passing before, but I've never encountered one on my system -heck, I didn't even know the details of a decompression bomb until I did a google on the term.
To keep this short, it seems that a decompression bomb is a sort of primitive "pandora's box" - what happens when you open pandora's box... A hell of a lot of bad crap pours out, and that's exactly what happens with a decompression bomb... An archive that's only a megabyte or two decompresses into gigabytes and gigabytes of data. How is this possible?
Now, it's easy to see how something like that would work out.... I've got 5,500,000,000 characters, all Xs... My file, which is just a few KB in size can quickly decompress into a file size that is impossible for the operating system or antivirus to handle.
The only problem with me having these decompression bombs, is the fact that they are OLDER FILES... One is the kenshin movie that I downloaded years ago, another is one of my MCSE training videos that I downloaded a few months ago... All of the files are video files, but at different dates. I may just be noticing this now (when the OS BSoDs, it's easy to notice the little things that I've ignored many times before) or it could be that a virus did infect my system and modified those files (this would be unlikely).
So, for now, I'm running
Well, I can be fairly certain of one thing... it really doesn't seem to be a hardware problem, and that is good. But there's still a lot of software issues that I have to check before I can even begin to fix the machine.
chants:
O, Almighty Lords of Computers,
please fix my computer at the next reboot!
[ End of Update ]
To bring everyone up to speed, during the last two weeks, I've been prepping for classroom exams (not Microsoft exams) - which I seem to have passed my classes, but I'm not quite sure what grade I'm getting yet. that'll probably be sometime next week.
I have also started to review some material for the 70-270 exam that I want to take sometime here. But, I've only been watching some 270 prep videos, and even that is pretty sparingly.
But, all of this has been going on for a while now... So why would I be posting now? Well... I was working in SUSE and I saw that my HDD activity light on my Windows 2000 machine (Miki-ni) was solid. Figuring that it was just a virus or spyware scan, I let it be. But, after about an hour or two with no change, I decided to VNC into the machine and see what's up. However, I couldn't VNC. I got a "Unable to connect" error. I decided to just KVM over there, but all I got was a black screen (power save wouldn't disengage) after trying and trying to get a signal --and only getting that little blinking green light, I decided to do hard reboot of the machine. Windows was starting normally, I even started to log into the machine, and that's when it happened:
STOPl 0X0000001E (0xC0000006, 0x77FAA4C2, 0x00000000, 0x77FEABA0)
KMODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED
If this is the first time you've seen this....I did a little research (using SUSE) about "KMODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED" errors, and the first link that came up was a Microsoft Knowledge Base article about a virus that was cause KMODE blue screen errors. There were other articles, almost all MS-KB articles, but since almost all of them had to do with a driver update failure or virus, I'm pretty worried, especially since I haven't touched my drivers sine the installation of "Ni" almost a year ago.
I'm also a little worried because when I booted into safe mode, and started working, I kept getting "
Unknown Hard Error" and haven't been able to launch any applications. I think I'm going to have to boot into safe-mode command-prompt to see if I can get this one fixed.*cries* (more updates coming soon on this topic)
Update [ Dec. 13 @ 7:45 AM]
After I booted into safe mode - command prompt only, I was able to work just fine. And since I was running an antivirus scan on my HDD, without error, I think that the "Unknown Hard Error" may not have had anything to do with the hardware on the system at all.
Moving right along though... I ran a full Avast! scan of the system, and used
compmgmt.msc to run some basic checks on the system, like defragmentation (just an analysis, I didn't actually defrag the drive). Avast! did report something odd... A few of my compressed files are marked as decompression bombs. I had herd of this term in passing before, but I've never encountered one on my system -heck, I didn't even know the details of a decompression bomb until I did a google on the term.
To keep this short, it seems that a decompression bomb is a sort of primitive "pandora's box" - what happens when you open pandora's box... A hell of a lot of bad crap pours out, and that's exactly what happens with a decompression bomb... An archive that's only a megabyte or two decompresses into gigabytes and gigabytes of data. How is this possible?
5.5*10^8 = 5,500,000,000Now, it's easy to see how something like that would work out.... I've got 5,500,000,000 characters, all Xs... My file, which is just a few KB in size can quickly decompress into a file size that is impossible for the operating system or antivirus to handle.
The only problem with me having these decompression bombs, is the fact that they are OLDER FILES... One is the kenshin movie that I downloaded years ago, another is one of my MCSE training videos that I downloaded a few months ago... All of the files are video files, but at different dates. I may just be noticing this now (when the OS BSoDs, it's easy to notice the little things that I've ignored many times before) or it could be that a virus did infect my system and modified those files (this would be unlikely).
So, for now, I'm running
chkdsk /x /r on the three harddrives (C 40gb, D 100gb, E 250gb) and once I reboot, I'll be running a boot-time antivirus scan (BTW: the scan on C will take place at boot, instead of with the scans of D and E).Well, I can be fairly certain of one thing... it really doesn't seem to be a hardware problem, and that is good. But there's still a lot of software issues that I have to check before I can even begin to fix the machine.
chants:
please fix my computer at the next reboot!
[ End of Update ]
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