Windows 7 "endless reboot"...

So now we have new terms for Windows, dubbed as "endless reboot". It seems like it happen to Vista users attempting to upgrade to Windows 7. Also another issue known as "62% bug", which finds the Windows 7 installation stalling at 62% complete. Microsoft’s support forums are rapidly filling with users reporting both issues.

If my memory serve me correctly, including these two now we have

• Blue screen of death
• Green ribbon of death
• Endless reboot
• 62% bug

What's next?

To Linux user, don't be so happy. It still have "kernel panic" problem sometimes.

Moral of the story.
There's no such thing as "Perfect OS". From the software development point of view, there will always be a bugs. If someone said that it's perfect that means it's bullshit, marketing people tends to say this by sweeping the truth under the carpet...

Fake Google Chrome OS...

People gets too excited to know how Google Chrome OS looks like thus giving an opportunity for someone to fake it :) If the fake creator targeted high traffic for his/her site, I guess he/she had successfully did it :)

Read it from here.

It's human nature to seek info into something that has been given a lot of coverage on it yet it is still not ready (Windows Longhorn anyone?)...

Rise of the laptop...

Screenshots...

Last year, an old friend of mine (Hazman) has given his old laptop (Compaq Presario V2000) for my kids (at first I thought he asked me to fixed it for him). The laptop is still in good condition but without battery and power adapter. I bought a brand new power adapter for RM 120.

Since the laptop only have 256Mb ram, I've installed XP Pro (pirated version) but once connected to internet I'm getting the BSOD complaining about NTOSKernel error. Installed Xubuntu, everything works fine except that when playing an online games the response was too slow. In the end both my kids use back my old machine.

Last weekend I managed to get a secondhand DDR1 PC2700 512Mb ram. Bought it from Meri for RM 65. On Sunday, I've given a new life to the laptop by installing Ubuntu 9.10 beta. The kids love it (not because of the OS and definitely they don't care about it, it's because they can play online games better now).

Talk about Ubuntu 9.10, I noticed there's new software included by default (apart from Empathy). Palimpsest Disk Utility, a nice utility that will notify you if your harddisk life going to end soon. It happen to this laptop :) I guess I need to prepare some money for the new harddisk...

MultiGet Download Manager...

Finally I've found a good download manager for Linux. All this while I'm using D4X and had thought that it's the only available download manager for Linux. Yes, I know wget, curl etc. I'm talking about something with GUI instead of command line. MultiGet does the job for me now. Great thing about MultiGet is that it can run on Windows 2000/XP, almost all Linux desktops, MacOs and BSDs.

Features

• Multi-task/multi-thread/multi-server usage
• User-friendly interface (resembling Flashget)
• Multiple language support
• Proxy support
• Extension ignoring/capture
• FTP anonymous pass
• Panel icon

MultiGet is available in Ubuntu Universe repository. To install, open terminal and type

    $ sudo apt-get install multiget

For the list of download managers available for Linux, you can refer to this blog.

Easiest way renaming file extension (in bulk)...

From uppercase to lowercase or vice versa.

In Linux,
1) All files in a directory

    $ for f in *.JPG; do mv "$f" "${f%JPG}jpg"; done

2) Files within subdirectory(ies) included

    $ for f in `find -name "*.JPG" -type f`; do mv "$f" "${f%JPG}jpg"; done

To learn more, go to Command line reference: Database and Operating Systems.

Run Warsow and getting black screen with message...

"Display is not supported" or "Out of Range". This only happen to lcd monitor.
Solution:
1) Edit Warsow config file

    $ gedit ~/.warsow/basewsw/config.cfg

2) Search for "vid_customheight" and "vid_customwidth" and change the value to one of the resolution (higher than 800x600) that works with your monitor

    seta vid_customheight "768"
    seta vid_customwidth "1024"

Same problem happen to me with Extreme Tux Racer.
Solution:
1) Edit Extreme Tux Racer options file

    $ gedit ~/.etracer/options

2) Search for "y_resolution" and "x_resolution" and change the value to one of the resolution (higher than 800x600) that works with your monitor

    set x_resolution 1280
    set y_resolution 1024

Recovering GRUB after installing Windows...

1) Download Super Grub Disk

2) Burn the image to a blank cd and reboot your machine

3) Boot into your Linux (0.9598 and 0.9799 menu options are slightly different)

4) Once in, open terminal and type

    $ sudo fdisk -l

5) You will see an output like this. For this case /dev/sda4 is my /boot partition

    Device    Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
    /dev/sda1   *          66        5222    41423602+   7  HPFS/NTFS
    /dev/sda2            5223        6266     8385930   83  Linux
    /dev/sda3            6267       30401   193864387+   5  Extended
    /dev/sda4               1          65      522081   83  Linux
    /dev/sda5            6267        6527     2096451   82  Linux swap / Solaris
    /dev/sda6            6528        9138    20972826   83  Linux
    /dev/sda7            9139       24803   125829081   83  Linux
    /dev/sda8           24804       30401    44965903+  83  Linux

    Partition table entries are not in disk order

6) Mount the partition. Change xxx into your partition number (Since I've already boot into my Linux and /dev/sda4 is mounted to /boot, I'm not sure whether this step is still required)

    $ sudo mount /dev/xxx /mnt

7) Install GRUB to the MBR

    $ sudo grub-install --root-directory=/mnt hd0

If step #6 is not required, I'm assuming the command would be (I need to check this with Ady)
Update 2009/10/13: Step #6 is not required if you booted into your own Linux instead of LiveCD.

    $ sudo grub-install --root-directory=/ hd0

8) I didn't make any changes to my existing /boot/grub/menu.lst file

Note:
Steps tested on my wife's machine with Linux Mint 7 after I'm installing Windows Server 2008. SGD version 0.9598.

An easiest way from Ubuntu wiki
1) Download Super Grub Disk

2) Burn into a cdrom

3) Boot from it

4) Select: GRUB => MBR & !LINUX! (>2) MANUAL |8-)

5) Select the Linux or Grub installation you want to restore.

6) You'll see the message: SGD has done it!

7) Reboot

Note:
I haven't try the second option yet.