Kayte R. wrote:

Colonel Panic wrote:

Kayte R. wrote:It's not so bad once you mess with the control panel a bit.
Google vista tweaks or vista optimization. Some of it is really worth doing.

Best Vista tweak/optimization: Back up all your files, open a command prompt, run fdisk, format drive C:/, put Windows XP or Ubuntu Linux installation disk into the CD tray, shut down and restart the computer, follow on-screen instructions.

Does a parallels or bootcamp like thing exist for this? Double booting linux and vista I mean.

It is very possible to have 2 or more different OSs on a machine. I friend of mine has a laptop that gives the user a choice of 3 OSs at boot-time: Debian Linux, OpenBSD and Windows XP. A couple years ago, I read a magazine article about a multi-boot system that ran no less than 7 different OSs (it was written by an IT consultant who uses his laptop for professional demonstrations and repair work on a variety of platforms).

When you boot from a Linux install disk, there's a "wizard"-type interface with a series of screens that guides you through the partitioning process by asking specific questions. This program automatically detects any current partitioning on your hard drive, and asks you how you want to repartition the drive. You can set the partition sizes however you like (the installers for most Linux distros can also create Windows partitions). You can decide how much space you wish to assign to Windows as well as Linux, and you can decide whether you want your Linux filesystem to reside on one partition or spread across several.

Once the partitioning is done, it will continue installing Linux into its own partition(s). After Linux finishes installing, you can then use a Windows disk to install Windows. Skip the part of the installation procedure where it asks you to partition the hard drive, and Windows will then go ahead install itself into the partition you created for it with the Linux installer, without even noticing any of your Linux partitions.

Speak of the devil, Vista just crashed on me in the most horrific way about 15 minutes ago.

Without warning, the blue screen of death came up, the screen shuttered and a tremendous vibrating sound like one of those paint shakers in a hardware store burst out over the speakers. It stayed like this for about 3 seconds, which seemed like an eternity, before the computer automatically restarted, leaving me juttering in abject horror.

It was a system failure the likes of which I haven't experienced in many a year. Had this taken place in 1989 on an Intel 386, it wouldn't have been so remarkable. But I can't recall anything remotely like that happen to me during this millenium.

Here's the error report I got:

Problemsignatur:
Problemereignisname: BlueScreen
Betriebsystemversion: 6.0.6000.2.0.0.768.3
Gebietsschema-ID: 1031

Zusatzinformationen zum Problem:
BCCode: a
BCP1: 040A0008
BCP2: 0000001B
BCP3: 00000000
BCP4: 81C6858E
OS Version: 6_0_6000
Service Pack: 0_0
Product: 768_1

Dateien, die bei der Beschreibung des Problems hilfreich sind:
C:\Windows\Minidump\Mini052008-01.dmp
C:\Users\AppData\Local\Temp\WER-145814-0.sysdata.xml
C:\Users\AppData\Local\Temp\WERE2DF.tmp.version.txt


Anyone make something of this?

Anyone make something of this?

Yes. Your locale is set to German. Try changing to US/Seattle/English






Just kidding!

Hope you do figure out what's wrong though, that's a bummer. Perhaps its in the system log?

Everything seems to be working fine for the time being. I didn't lose any data, so I'll be happy enough as long as this never happens again.

Still, the sheer violence of this system crash was pretty off the hook.

My main machine has been running 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for about 3 months without a single crash or even a reboot. The last time I actually shut down my computer was when I installed hardware (a new video card). Prior to that, it had run faultlessly 24/7 for about 4 months without a reboot.

I install and remove programs whenever I like, without ever paying a penny or having to put a CD into the drive. It's all done transparently via the Internet and I never have to reboot afterwards. I never need to defragment my hard drive because the Linux ext3 filesystem doesn't allow files to become fragmented in the first place. I never have to worry about viruses or spyware because that crap don't run on Linux.

I can run most of the Windows programs I want, using Wine (the Windows emulator). However, readily-available free software meets most of my needs. Instead of the Microsoft Office suite, I use OpenOffice. I browse the Web using Firefox instead of IE. I organize and play music files using Amarok instead of iTunes. I watch movies using VLC or Mplayer instead of that shitty old Windows Media Player. For editing audio and video, I use Audacity and Cinelerra. The Kopete IM client handles AIM, MSN and Yahoo! messaging systems. With few exceptions, I find most of the open-source programs to be as good or better than their commercial counterparts. They're usually easier to use, having been designed for functional simplicity rather than flashy nonsense and feature overload.

After using Linux and open-source software almost exclusively for about a year now, I can't see any good reason to go back to the horrible Microsoft OSs and crappy bloatware I used before.

Colonel Panic wrote:Audacity .

It's cool that audacity exists and every thing but it's still pretty useless for any real editing tasks... What heavier-duty audio software runs on alternative OS's?

Kayte R. wrote:

Colonel Panic wrote:Audacity .

It's cool that audacity exists and every thing but it's still pretty useless for any real editing tasks... What heavier-duty audio software runs on alternative OS's?

ubuntustudio has a bunch of interesting audio apps...

Colonel Panic wrote:My main machine has been running 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for about 3 months without a single crash or even a reboot. The last time I actually shut down my computer was when I installed hardware (a new video card). Prior to that, it had run faultlessly 24/7 for about 4 months without a reboot.

I install and remove programs whenever I like, without ever paying a penny or having to put a CD into the drive. It's all done transparently via the Internet and I never have to reboot afterwards. I never need to defragment my hard drive because the Linux ext3 filesystem doesn't allow files to become fragmented in the first place. I never have to worry about viruses or spyware because that crap don't run on Linux.

I can run most of the Windows programs I want, using Wine (the Windows emulator). However, readily-available free software meets most of my needs. Instead of the Microsoft Office suite, I use OpenOffice. I browse the Web using Firefox instead of IE. I organize and play music files using Amarok instead of iTunes. I watch movies using VLC or Mplayer instead of that shitty old Windows Media Player. For editing audio and video, I use Audacity and Cinelerra. The Kopete IM client handles AIM, MSN and Yahoo! messaging systems. With few exceptions, I find most of the open-source programs to be as good or better than their commercial counterparts. They're usually easier to use, having been designed for functional simplicity rather than flashy nonsense and feature overload.

After using Linux and open-source software almost exclusively for about a year now, I can't see any good reason to go back to the horrible Microsoft OSs and crappy bloatware I used before.

Thank you very assuaging my fear, that I would have to stay away from PC's forever once the sale/support of XP expired!

Kayte R. wrote:

Colonel Panic wrote:Audacity .

It's cool that audacity exists and every thing but it's still pretty useless for any real editing tasks... What heavier-duty audio software runs on alternative OS's?

snd is a stupidly powerful soundfile editor. Pretty obscure until you get the hang of it but really powerful and fully extensible using a built in Lisp interpreter. Emacs for audio.

projectMalamute wrote:

Kayte R. wrote:

Colonel Panic wrote:Audacity .

It's cool that audacity exists and every thing but it's still pretty useless for any real editing tasks... What heavier-duty audio software runs on alternative OS's?

snd is a stupidly powerful soundfile editor. fully extensible using a built in Lisp interpreter. Emacs for audio.

Probably right up her "going to school for comp sci" alley with the usage of LISP. Lot's of Insane, Stupid Parentheses

I miss doing shit in LISP.