The BoormanBlog

Last night and most of today I have been trying to content with blue screens of death that have been bothering me for well over a year. Lessee…what have I tried so far?

Update all my drivers
Did a repair install of windows
Did a complete reinstall of windows
Disabled all my PCI cards
Ran a memory test
Replace by PCI IDE controller
Removed, cleaned and replaced my heat sink, heat sink fan and power supply fan
Put a new coat of thermal paste between the CPU and the heat sink

and I’m STILL getting the BSOD that says “IRQL_NOT_LESS_THAN_OR_EQUAL”. How very helpful of you Mr. Gates. Thanks a lot.

This is why I like linux. It has all the problems of Microsoft, but at least it’s free!

If you haven’t already done so, go to www.Mozilla.com and download the Firefox 3.0 web browser today. The Mozilla foundation is trying to set a world record for most downloads in a day, so let’s do our part to help Firefox 3.0 into the Guinness book!

Firefox 3.0 is MUCH better and faster than Internet Explorer, not to mention a WHOLE lot safer! Firefox 3.0 also has several improvements over its predecessor, including a memory leak fix. This should keep 3.0 from
slowing down from continued browsing.

Unfortunately, since this is a major release, those who are already using Firefox 2.0 will not receive this via automatic updates. You’ll have to download and install 3.0 yourself.

I’ve already downloaded it. In fact, I’m using it to post this entry. One thing that bugs me is the highlighted text box that displays a border within the text box. Very annoying. Otherwise, a solid release.

Have you already downloaded Firefox 3.0? Comment here and let us know what you think!

I’m starting to remember why I love Linux so much. Even though a lot of hardware doesn’t work on it, what does work actually WORKS!! I installed a PCI card to accomodate a 3rd hard drive (did you know motherboards can only support two hard drives? Me neither? ). That’s when all my troubles began. The card works fine, but I am getting BSOD’s every few minutes. The lovely thing is, it seems to be a different error each time. Most of them are IRQ_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL. Looks like some kind of driver issue. Like I said, the IDE controller card works fine. I suspect it may be my Hammerfall HDSP sound card (expensive!). I’ve trolled RME’s message boards, and it looks like a driver rollback may be in order.

I’ve also heard that the physical placement of your PCI cards could cause problems. So now I’ll be looking forward to disconnecting nearly a dozen wires from my box, carrying it out the computer room, opening it up, and removing and replacing 4 PCI cards (2 slots for the Hammerfall, 1 for the IDE controller, 1 for the Hauppage TV card) in some kind of deranged musical chairs.

After I get this fixed, I am leaving Windows XP Pro the heck alone. Forget Vista. I don’t have the hardware for it anyway. I’m not about to replace my motherboard, because I doubt they make them with 4 PCI slots nowadays. Planned obsolescence. Now it’s all PCI express, PCIe, PCIx12 or whatever.

Eh. I’m keeping my box the way it is. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it. I wish I took that to heart, but I like to tinker. My motto appears to be “If it ain’t broke, break it! Then fix it!”

I still have my copy of Mandriva 2008 Spring, but I’m not upgrading just yet. Things are working OK, and I don’t really feel like going through all the hours of reconfiguring the OS and all the applications. I’ll wait for a weekend where I have nothing going on, whenever that is…

So Microsoft mentioned that they are shipping the first service pack for Vista sometime this quarter. Unfortunately, there does not seem to be any performance improvements or any major driver issues resolved. Oh well. I’ll just keep with my Mandriva Linux, thank you very much. Much more secure than Windows, uses a lot less system resources and oh, is entirely free. The operating system and a host of software. Productivity, internet, games, you name it. There’s even emulator software to run (some) of your Windows software (not very well).

If you can handle some of the more “unique” folks in the user community, and the ubiquitous penguin mascot, then give it a try. Did I mention it’s all free?

I downloaded the 2008 Powerpack a few months ago and tried to install it. It was a great big mess and a time waster. I lost an entire weekend trying to get the darn thing to install, much less work!

One thing I did NOT do before installing was the checksums. Maybe I just had a bad download. I’m a bit wiser (and greyer) from the experience. Next time I’ll do a checksum to make sure the download is good.

Linux. It’s as free as your time. Apparently my time is dirt cheap.

But I’m not swayed. The geeks shall inherit the earth!

Today I planned to reinstall both Mandriva and XP, complete with applications, with OS and apps on different drives. Instead all I managed to get done was burn the iso to a disk.

I downloaded Mandriva 2007 spring edition from the Mandriva club: a 4.3GB file. Today I tried to burn it to a DVD using K3B.

Nope.

Can’t burn files over 4GB. What?!? The DVD-RW has room for 4.7GB don’t give me this. After some gooling, I find out it’s a K3B limitation. Great. I go to advanced settings, select “allow overburn” and try again.

No good.

So I get to the K3B home page. The newest version 1.0 (!) eliminates “that stupid 4GB limitation bug. If it’s that stupid, why didn’t they fix it sooner? I can get the newest K3B, but only if I download the source and compile myself.

Yeah right.

I’ve learned not to go to bed angry, so I’ll sign off here and continue tomorrow.

This weekend I made up my mind to reinstall Mandriva Linux. This time, I’m using the power pack which should have all the proprietary drivers I need to get my nvidia graphics card configured. Hopefully it will configure my Hauppauge TV card too.

Time will tell, but if I’m quiet for awhile, you’ll know why.

Yep. I don’t know if this is a good thing or a bad thing. I finally shelled out $66 to join the Mandriva Club. That got me the “standard” membership, which allows me to download the first 4 CD’s of the “powerpack” version of the latest Mandriva. This comes with a bunch of proprietary drivers and commercial applications. Hopefully my graphics card will be detected and configured properly. I’d hate to have paid for linux for nothing.

Made more upgrades to my PC today. A few weeks I installed my first graphics card (cheapie nVidia, still have issues with the Linux drivers btw). Last week I got ripped off buying a 512MB stick of PC2700 RAM ($53 should have checked eBay first).

Today I installed my 3rd hard drive. Did you know that motherboards can only support 2 hard drives? Me neither. Lesson learned. So today I got myself an IDE controller card to take care of that. I think this thing is officially maxed out. There’s not a single PCI slot left, and it’s pretty crowded in the case. So I’m going to use the 1st HD for the XP/Mandiva dual boot. 2nd HD for applications. 3rd will be for data (formatted FAT32 so it can be read/written by both OS’s).

Booyaa!