So in order to wholly baptise my new laptop, I will need to install Ubuntu or some flavor of Linux and use GRUB as the bootloader and break the laptop. This is what I do. However, I am going to begin from a disk image in Virtual Box.
I figure, I am so bored of those vanilla installs breaking my computer, let's add a bit of sadism with an extra convolution:
10:37AM in Waxing Electro, mfg.SE tagged area 51, google, linux, osx, stackexchange, ubuntu, unix, windows So i put up another (likely to be unsuccessful) proposal on Area 51 for a Q & A forum. This time I went after trying to get a Google Geeks site going. I am intrigued by the negative success of it. My success thus far with the other two was someone posting a question or two. This time I have a comment questioning the necessity of another prop to cover ground seen as redundant in scope to the web apps and Android sites. Three people up-voted the sentiment, and one person voted to close the prop altogether.
i mean, i get that. i do. i'm not going to use this space to argue my point of view on the viability of the prop much considering i dont know if many who are here even are familiar with Stack Exchange or Area 51. but anyway, Google is setting itself up as a platform beyond the scope of both Android (an embedded OS) and beyond just web apps (considering the Chrome desktop OS).Their products are beyond the scope of simple web applications as we normally conceive of them. there is a degree of interoperability that, if properly harnessed, is and will be a platform on the scale of Windows or Unix, rather than on par with dropbox experts.
i suggest merely that maybe organizing a community of people who can drill down into the Google-brain (you know there is a Microsoft and Unix brain for how to do something) isn't such a bad thing. the Google platform is obviously burgeoning and not mature to the extent the other two are, but that is precisely what makes having a community a powerful idea.
If you would like to support the prop, click here!
Google Geeks
Proposed Q&A site for extreme users of Google's platform, that know the products' ins and outs, and the nooks and crannies of each lab for those products. We can help you connect every last tube as needed.
i cant believe i am this happy to have got windows installed.
update. effectively solved, but not really, and definitely not tidily:
a) used seatools to perform a full erase of the seagate drive (took about 3 hours).
b*) unplugged seagate, tried to run memtest from WD only boot and got an error "too small lower memory ([x] > [y])"
c) unplugged the WD drive
d) booted vista installer dvd, works; running updates on windows.
I am not sure why the full erase worked, aside from that it would have erased the mbr/grub record. so i think this was a grub issue all along. i have no explanation for why this fixed it, but now i am facing a new problem.
because of the heavy-handedness of this solution, my drives currently exist only independent of each other. however, i want access to both drives and the ability to dual boot. my fears: in all likelihood, if the drives were to boot together a) there would be a conflict, or b) one mbr/boot loader would try to overwrite the other. so i will choose the windows boot loader for the sake simplicity (and windows boot loader being a finicky punk that cant update itself!). any suggestions on how to reconcile this problem from where it stands now?
essentially, i need to rewrite the mbr on the WD drive to match up with the Seagate mbr. i am afraid of just booting two boot-loaders without knowing which will take precedence (and risk grub winning and my inherited grub menu becoming 3pgs long). if anybody knows of a good bootable tool i would appreciate it.
the apparent best option to me: its ubuntu and is completely up and going in less than an hour, so i can just migrate my mp3s etc some other way and then reinstall. i dont know whats broken about my current config. I dont want to run into any further problems after i get Vista squared away. So I think this might be my best option considering i dont have much invested in the ubu install, and i am unsure what my original GRUB install method did to render the problem in the first place.
Any feedback would be appreciated, or just a +1 encouragement!
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/284441-31-vista-install-fail
http://forums.techguy.org/windows-vista/916637-vista-dvd-install-fail.html
i thought what the hell, lets call them all the same thing.
the post
I recently got my computer back into a workable state after almost a month of work and fail. Originally I was dual booting Vista & Ubuntu, then after a platter went bad across both partitions i basically had to go back to scratch (you can find out more deets here). Anyway, I have Ubuntu 9.10 installed and it is running fine, once it boots.
my rig is a homebrew with an i7 920, intel dx58so mobo, 2x2g DDR3 ram, 850W Thermaltake, ATI 4870
I am facing two primary problems. A) my BIOS post time has gone from 3 to about 15-20 seconds, and OS boot from GRUB menu went from about 8 to 30 seconds. B) i am running into an error trying to install vista from my OEM DVD (Home Premium 64-bit); it gets to the green (kernel) loading bar part of the menu, then hangs indefinitely (for at least 25 minutes). i thought this may have to do with bios and an ide/ahci driver loading issue but in ide mode it still isnt responding. (this disk is clean, and i have used it three times previously to reinstall.)
A) i am considering updating my BIOS (which has been updated quite a few times over the past 15 months) to see if that will resolve/reset the problem. however, i am doubtful that it will and fearful that it will only cause more problems. however, could it be a physical problem with the board? i did a complete teardown and rebuild and nothing seemed to be out of order but i wouldnt have known what to check other than big problems.
B) i would hope that updating the BIOS might purge whatever difficulty the Vista DVD is having with my system and loading it. does anyone know what else may contribute to the green bar not loading? there seems to be no explanation for why it hangs there at the green loading bar in this situation. or at least i havent been able to find a similar situation. among the fixes, was the purchase of a brand new HDD (WD 1T Caviar Black) and it wouldnt install in a basic config with just the HDD and a stick of ram.
i7920 // 2x2gig DDR3 1333 // DX58SO // Thermaltake850 // ATI4870 // U.KK9.10 & [dead]64-bit Vista[/dead]
mfg
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1455040
for good measure i added the ubuntu forums to the list.
more hacking needed, or vista refresh?
got wow installed in wine, got graphics working by adding <SET gxApi "opengl"> to the end of the config.wtf file in my wow wtf directory. used wowiupdater to get some addons installed (sexy maps is sexy!). got a lot of my key bindings put together. one addon pack had azcast bar (which stacked all of my cooldowns on top of each other for some reason) and it took me a while to identify and disable it; installed quartz. and it was basically playable.
im not one to complain about the 35-45fps at very low settings with my second monitor disabled. i am not really too aggravated by no audio. both annoy me because i know it could be better, both make me want to install vista again. but what is KIIILLLLLLLING me is that Wine doesnt support my mouse.
yes. left, right click, middle button, scroll wheel all work; but i have a logitech LX8 which has four additional buttons. page fwd/bk, and scroll left/right. ubuntu has added support for it and its a dream in chrome. but Wine supposedly has a seven button (counting scroll up/down) limitation. consequently it is mapping those four buttons as two buttons; ie if i bind scroll left, and then try to bind scroll right it overwrites the scroll left and rebinds either as mouse button 4.
so. do i try to keep hacking to make it work; or do i spend my time trying to get my vista installed? is it as simple as a bios update? will that cure my dvd-booting issues with vista?
mfg
i think im going to need to get vista working again for the sake of the computer because whatever is inhibiting vista is probably a leech on the system. yeah.
http://forums.techguy.org/linux-unix/914870-solved-grub-mbr-help-needed.html
http://grub.enbug.org/Grub2LiveCdInstallGuide (GRUB solution)
https://sourceforge.net/projects/clonezilla/forums/forum/663168/topic/3661506
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/236915-50-linux-vista-hardware-issues-booting
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these are all posts related to koala going down. so if you would like a childrens collection of me and my attempts to getting my terrific computer usable, read up and laugh at me.
mfg
