OSRI Weekend

For those unfamiliar with the term, OSRI is a acronym we use in my line of work. I means Operating System Re-Install. I know, I know. Geek language is just so darn rife with acronyms it sounds like an alphabet soup.

Well, this weekend I embark on a regular round of OSRI. I tend to do it every few months just to start anew. I guess this has been one of my longest runs. I haven't done an OSRI since August. I used to do it every three months or so. I've stayed too long probably because for the first time in many years I actually enjoyed Windows. Windows 7 was actually pleasant. I usually have my computer dual-booted and have been equally happy with Ubuntu 9.04. Even when 9.10 came around, I didn't feel I needed to upgrade. I guess it comes with age. When you get older, you tend to stick to what you like. No more listless multi-boot experiments.

This isn't a joke. Seriously. Just a few years back, I actually maintained 5 operating systems at any given time on my machine. I nominally had Windows 2000, Windows XP, Ubuntu, Mandrake (now called Mandriva) and Xandros. I dabbled on even more Live distributions, burned whatever caught my eye in Distrowatch.com. I had to give it up after going through the pain of having to maintain updates, security and otherwise, on 5 different operating systems. Add to that the fact that at the time, I only had dial-up. Heck, those were the days.

So this weekend I dive into another round of OSRI to rid my system of all the crud that got accumulated in the last 6 months. It's going to be a geeky weekend for me. I'm planning to install Windows 7 and Linux Mint 8. I've been meaning to install the latter from when it launched. Now I'm really going for it. My only problem now is the space on my hard drive. After almost a year, the Seagate 500 GB drive  I bought now has only 84.6 GB left of free space. I think I need to rethink my storage strategy. But for now, just installing will have to do.

Machine Revival - Part I

Yesterday, I went out with my wife and bought a computer table. I had been planning to revive an old Dell Dimension XPS T500 I had laying around and repurposing it to be an all-around computer for the kids. My son has simple needs. He has great fun playing the games included in Child's Play and Gcompris. Well the wife and I ended up buying a cheap computer table from Saver's Mall in Balibago.

After I got home, I immediately started working on the machine. I installed an 80GB Maxtor IDE drive I bought used a few months back. I also removed a non-working network card, and stuck a more recent PCI LAN Card i had lying around in one of my desk drawers. I also installed a PCI USB card.  The  Dimension XPS T500 had slow USB 1.1 and the card would at least bring it up to USB 2.0 speeds. I then closed up the side panel and expected the thing to boot. But it didn't! Beeps ensued and the Diagnostic LED's on the machine's back lit up with a pattern. So I went to find an online manual, praying one was still online at all. This machine has a date stamp of November 1999 after all. 

As luck would have it I found one (if your interested, it's here: http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/dkub/) . Following the clues as to what was going wrong, I reseated the video card and tried booting it. It booted up but the color on the display was yellowish. I reseated it again and powered it up once more. It beeped with a memory error. I unplugged the DIMMs, moved 'em to other slots and gave it a try. It POSTed! But then it was showing a PCI error. I forgot I left a PCI dial-up modem installed and decided to chuck it. The thing booted fine afterwards.

After I got it working I tried Fedora 12 Games, but it was just too slow to be usable. I was just hoping, but I knew the machine was too slow to use Fedora 12 Games. Anyway, I went off and tried another live distro, Linux Mint 8. This time it booted a lot more faster than Fedora, but it was still quite a good 8-10 minutes before I saw the desktop. I could just imagine my son jumping in anticipation only to get tired before the machine had fully booted. He's a little hyper over waiting time and jumps excitedly at times. While that was happening, I was waiting for my DreamLinux 3.5 download to finish. I've used DreamLinux 3.1 before on this same machine and it worked okay. And so I went with the reliable option and went ahead and installed  DreamLinux 3.5. After rebooting though, the machine wouldn't boot into it. It looked like the drive was having problems. So I tried disconnecting it and checking if the cables and connectors were okay, then booted it up again to try and install DreamLinux 3.5 again. Then I noticed the drive size was only 74.++ GB when it should be a little over 76 GB. Something wasn't right about the capacity. While thinking about it I decided to think it over. 

So today, after I got home and after thinking about it the whole day while at work, I gave the drive a go with DBAN. It's still running, actually. I don't expect it to finish any time soon. Maybe tomorrow morning. So I'll post an update if i get this to work. It would be a waste if I didn't get to play Tux Racer on this old machine now, would it?

Hiding/Restoring Win 7 Updates

Ever been faked by Win 7 into thinking important updates are in the offing only to find out that the only updates available are language packs you don't need? Here's a simple way to rid yourself of the notifications on unwanted optional updates and ensure you still get prompted for the important stuff:

1. Open up Windows Update and go to Optional Updates:

2. Right-click on the update you wish to hide and click Hide Update:

Real easy, eh? Should you choose to restore that update, the steps are equally easy.

1. Go back to the main Windows Update screen and click the Restore Update link:

2. Next tick the check boxes of the update you wish to restore and click the Restore button.

Hope this helps ;-)