Weblog of a “Switcher”

Wow guys, I thought installing Windows XP in Parallels or Boot Camp was bad...

OK, so I did something kind of stupid this weekend, I attempted to "update" my Windows XP game machine to Windows XP Pro. I thought: "How bad could it be, I'm going from XP to XP Pro?" What a freaking mistake!

So I did the upgrade and when it rebooted to finish the upgrade, it started bringing up the Windows splash screen, then went black then instantly after that, the infamous Blue Screen of Death followed immediately after that with a reboot.

Why did this happen? Well, my guess is that I had a separate partition with Vista RC2 installed and so I probably had a "dual boot" boot sector that wasn't updated properly after the update. So, I might have been able to recover the update, but I really didn't feel like it, so I wiped out the partitions, and started from scratch.

I almost decided to screw Windows and install Ubuntu. However, I am wanting to play Spore when it comes out next year. So Windows it is...

This is where things when really south. Oh sure, the install of XP Pro went easily enough. What went south was the fact that my computer was running like an IBM AT from back in the day and had no sound. Why? No drivers. Really, Windows had no drivers for my system.

At first, I was pissed. I have an install disk with Windows XP Pro SP 2. Then I realized something. There are billions of hardware combinations that Windows runs under. How in the world could Microsoft have all the drivers for all the combinations that it has to run under? Then I remembered that my Dell came with a "ResourceCD" that has all the drivers for the hardware that it came with. So I pulled out the CD, after taking about an hour to find it, and ran the installer to install the drivers I needed to get my system up to something a little more modern.

What surprises me, in this day and age, is why isn't this stored "in the computer" as a ROM drive that can be activated so that the Windows install could find it and use it to get drivers installed? This way, after installing Windows, a user will have a system that "works". Instead, I had to do things that a normal home user would have no idea how to do. It wasn't easy at all to do. I had done it once before so I actually had a clue what I was doing. Otherwise I would have been a little iffy my self.

So compared to Leopard and the Mac, the process of installing the OS from a wiped HDD is like night and day. Leopard was extremely easy and Windows XP Pro was a nightmare.

Now after all the hell I went through to get Windows installed and my hardware drivers installed. I then had the fun I have had in the past with Parallels and Boot Camp. 87 lovely updates followed by several more updates for a total of over 110. So, about 10 reboots and 110+ updates and I finally have a Dell PC that is ready to use again. With Leopard and the Mac, it was install, maybe one reboot no more than two, and I was up and running with the Mac. Yet there are still people out there that think that Windows is way easier to use than the Mac...

It's really a shame that most game developers don't make Mac versions of their games. There are a few that do. Thanks Blizzard! It's funny really, since the Mac has a limited number of graphics cards that are supported and all the rest of the hardware is built into the Mac, developing games for the platform has to be as easy to do as any XBox/Playstation/Wii game would be. Oh sure, there are not as many Macs in the home as there are PC's or Game Consoles, but still...

So that was my fun this weekend. All because I wanted to be able to access my Dell with Remote Desktop Connection instead of VNC. Ah well...

written by Dave M. \\ tags: Billions, Blue Screen Of Death, Boot Camp, Boot Sector, Dell 8400, Dual Boot, Game Machine, Guess, Hardware Combinations, Installing Windows, Mistake, Parallels, Partition, Partitions, Reboot, Rom Drive, Scratch, Surprises, Windows Splash Screen, Windows Xp

No, I'm not talking about updates to OS X Tiger or Leopard. I'm talking about installing Windows XP Pro SP2! Yes that's right. After SP2 there are 86 updates that need to be downloaded and installed after installing Windows XP Pro SP 2. Not counting the update to the updater.

I really get the feeling that Windows XP needs an SP3 and soon!

Anyone who complains about Apple and the updates that they have to go through after installing Tiger, just point them to a Windows box and have them install XP Pro SP2.

I also know there will be more to go, since I haven't updated Internet Explorer and there are also other updates that are usually not critical but are still desired.

Man, I am soooo glad I switched to Macintosh!

Why am I installing Windows XP? Oh, yea, I forgot to mention that I am installing it to my Mac Pro in Boot Camp. I lost my secondary HD which had the previous Windows installation on it. Not sure why the drive bit the bullet, but when you hear clicking and spinning down and back up, you have to assume the drive is toast. I went out and purchased a 750GB SATA drive today and used Time Machine to restore the OS X side of the disk. (That process was so damn easy a cave man could do it.) Now, I'm reinstalling Windows and a few other programs so that I can use Parallels to access it. I rarely reboot into Windows on my Mac Pro. If I am going to play a game, I switch to my Windows box behind my monitor and play there. I just like the convienence of having a Windows partition on the Mac for doing non-game things.

Well, I'm about half way through installing the 86 updates, so I guess I'll wrap up this post and get ready for the hundreds of reboots I am going to have to do to finish getting windows ready to use again.

Update: I only had to install about 20 more updates after the 86 to start with. Also, only had 4 reboots during that process. So, it's really not that bad... really... (sarcasm sign being held up and waved furiously)

written by Dave M. \\ tags: Boot Camp, Cave Man, Convienence, Hd, Installing Windows, Internet Explorer, Os X, Os X Tiger, Parallels, Partition, Reinstalling Windows, Sarcasm, Sp 2, Sp3, Time Machine, Toast, Windows Box, Windows Installation, Windows Xp, Windows Xp Pro Sp2

I have been trying to get Boot Camp to work for me since I got my Mac Pro. Up until just a couple of days ago, I had not been able to succeed. I found the solution to my problem on Apple's discussion forums thank goodness.

However, let me impart my latest attempt and success first and as I do, I'll reveal what I learned to allow myself to get Boot Camp to work.

My latest attempt was started because a dear friend is allowing me to use a version of Windows XP Pro that doesn't require authorization. Is that an Enterprise version?

I first installed the OS under Parallels using the .ISO I was sent. That worked flawlessly and using the latest Parallels makes installing Windows and Vista as easy as using OS X. It's quite impressive. Coherence is just amazing. There is just something very odd about seeing Internet Explorer 7 running side by side with Safari and not seeing the Windows desktop but the Mac OS X desktop.

So I burned the Windows XP Pro .ISO to a CD and downloaded the latest Boot Camp (1.1.2) to make sure I had the latest and greatest. I started the Boot Camp Assistant. I partitioned my second 250GB HD for Windows. Burned the Apple Windows Driver CD and attempted to start the install.

Again and again, I kept getting this message that I needed to wait for the CD to be recognized by the OS before the process can start. Since I'm burning the CD, I thought that maybe the CD wasn't bootable, so I put it in my Windows box and booted the computer. Sure enough, the CD booted just fine. So that isn't the problem.

My next course of action was to go off to Apple's discussion forums. I keep hearing that they are not the best place to get info, but I figure it's better than nothing at this point. I find a couple of threads about my problem, but they were pretty much saying the same thing I was thinking. Later that evening, I had a thought. I wondered if I needed to be logged in as an Administrator in order for this to work. So I logged out of my Standard user account and logged in with my Administrator account and tried again. Low and behold the process of installing Windows XP Pro began. It sure would be nice if the documentation stated this fact.

So installing Windows went without incident. Some have had problems. Maybe all the problems I was having getting the process started allowed me to skip all the installation woes others have had. Anyway, I finished installing Windows, inserted the Drivers CD and installed all those. Then started the way too much fun task of installing the 60 odd patches and approximately 12 suggested updates. Windows really needs a better way to deal with updates. Their way really sucks!

I finally got the OS up and running and I just say it's pretty nice to be running Windows XP Pro on a Quad XEON system with 2GB's of RAM. The OS sees all 4 cores so at least when games start supporting multi-core systems, I'll be ready. I may need to get a better video card thought. World of Warcraft seemed a little slow compared to my OS X version. The OS X version has been updated to support multi-threading OpenGL which really sped up the frame rate on the Mac side.

Using Boot Camp has some big drawbacks thought. I like to listen to iTunes while I play games. Normally I'm playing on my old PC box and the Mac is playing iTunes. If I'm booting to Windows on the Mac Pro, I can't do that. So I have to use my iPod instead. It works, it's not that big of a deal, but I like the freedom.

If I could wish for anything in the new Leopard OS coming out soon, I think I would like to see the ability to switch between OS X and Windows via a simple menu option or keypress. Kind of like how a KVM works. When I'm using OS X, Windows is sleeping in memory somewhere and when I switch to Windows, OS X sleeps in memory. It would really be nice if they didn't sleep but just didn't display, but that would probably take up too much physical memory.

Anyway, Boot Camp is pretty cool, Parallels is cooler. Parallels is even cooler still since it can use the Boot Camp partition as it's virtual HD.

written by Dave M. \\ tags: Boot Camp, Camp 1, Coherence, Couple Of Days, Dear Friend, Discussion Forums, Driver Cd, Enterprise Version, Goodness, Hd, Installing Windows, Internet Explorer 7, Mac Os X, Os X, Parallels, Safari, Windows Box, Windows Desktop, Windows Driver, Windows Xp

So, thanks to Microsoft Windows, I was finally able to convince my parents to switch to a Mac as well.

Why? Well, my Dad mistakenly used Internet Explorer to go someplace on the web. Apparently, that place wasn't very nice, and the next thing he knew, windows were popping up left and right. Later, when my mother tried to use the computer, Internet Explorer windows started popping up all over the place for her too. There were two processes running that were suspicious looking. "isamini" and "isamonitor". Looking these up on Google, I find that one is a trojan and the other was just malware in general. Aparently both do bad things to the system.

So this weekend, I spent 6 hours backing up their data, wiping out their HD and re-installing Windows. The backup/re-install/restore didn't take that terribly long. It was the freaking UPDATES that took forever. First, there was the fact that Windows Update thought we were not using a Genuine copy of Windows. That was utterly ridiculous. I used the "Re-install" disk that came with the freaking computer. I had to go through some bizarre set of webpages that identified the little certificate on the side of the computer. Once I did that, I was allowed to start the update process.

There were 10 updates in the first set. That took about a half an hour, then came SP2, that took about 45 minutes, then after SP2, there were 49, count them, 49 more updates that needed to be done. I stopped at this point. Enough is enough.

So to try to combat future problems, I set up both my parents accounts as "limited users". This works great. Now, they are not allowed to change the Power Saving features in the Display options. I also forgot to install some printer drivers they need for the printer they have. So back to their house I went tonight to make those adjustments.

Tomorrow afternoon, on my way home from work, I'm buying a MacMini for them. I'll get it setup and bring it over to them when I finish. If they don't want the Windows box, I'll probably bring it home and install a Linux distro on it.

There was a time when I really though that Winows was not all that bad. Between Vista being as useless as Windows XP when it comes to security, (I'll explain) and XP being useless, it wasn't really all that hard to convince the matriarch of the family that the switch was necessary.

I make the claims about XP and Vista that I am making due to the fact that Vista seems to have a similar security model to XP. A "Standard user" can't do much (apparently they can change the power saving features unlike XP). I suppose this is a good thing. However, in order to do anything with the system, you have to log into an administrator account. XP is the same way with it's "Limited user" accounts. I take part of the above statements back... I tried to change a setting somewhere else, and it asked to put in the password of the admin account. So they did make some improvements. Maybe the other places it doesn't ask will get fixed before it's released.

I am writing this post under Vista as a "Standard user". Basically, I want to see how Vista fairs compared to OS X and the way it handles changes to the system by non-admin accounts. Windows XP just doesn't deal with Limited users at all. From what I can see with Vista, at least it has the ability to make some changes as a Standard user. My opinion, it doesn't stack up at all. Apple got it right with OS X and the way it deals with standard users vrs admin users.

Thank God I was able to convince my parents to switch. :whew:

written by Dave M. \\ tags: Computer Internet, Dad, Genuine Copy, Google, Half An Hour, Hd, Installing Windows, Internet Explorer Windows, Isamini, Isamonitor, Macmini, Microsoft, Microsoft Windows, Parents, Printer Drivers, Sp2, Tomorrow Afternoon, Trojan, Windows Box, Windows Update