Windows 7 RC1 was released a little earlier than everyone expected and woohoo for that! Even though I’m now a what many describe as a Mac Fan boy I still have a decently powerful PC that I built sitting next to my drool worthy iMac that is still running XP.

There is nothing wrong with XP (cough) but I do like trying new shiny things and Windows 7 defiantly seems to be one of them. I could never run windows Vista on my PC because of the totally awesome ” Display driver nvlddmkm stopped responding, but has successfully recovered.” error. Thanks Microsoft / Nvidia – your cool!

I never got that issue with Windows 7 Beta which was great but I didn’t find it stable enough to use. After all I do use my PC for some work related tasks such as testing websites in IE. I thought RC1 was going to be a close as the RTM (Release to the Manufacture) as I’m going to get without splashing out some hard earned so I thought I’ll give it a shot.

The install as seamless and very fast – awesome. First boot – blank screen after log in.. Damn. Second boot, blank screen and so on and so forth. Re installed twice and still the same thing.

I found many solutions but none fixed my error.

The issue I have seems to be my SLI Nvidia 7950GX2 – which is two cards in a single form factor. Since I can’t split them up I had to dig around in safe mode to work it out and “Hurray!” I did – and here is how I did it.

1. Boot that bad boy in Safe Mode
2. Click on Run then Control Panel
3. Open System then click on Device Manager
4. Expand the Display Adapters Tree
5. Right click on the second “NVIDIA GeForce 7950 GX2 (Microsoft Corporate – WDDM) entry and select Disable (click yes on the pop up)
6. Right click on the first “NVIDIA GeForce 7950 GX2 (Microsoft Corporate – WDDM) entry and select Uninstall. Click on OK when asked.
7. Restart the bad boy.
8. Let the PC boot normally (not in safe mode)
9. Windows will automatically install the default driver and re enable the second card. It’ll then ask to restart – DON’T – Click Restart Later
10. Head on over to http://www.nvidia.com and download the Windows 7 Drivers for the 7 Series GPU (version 185.81 beta is the current version at time of writing clocking in at 97.9mB) – Save it to a location that you can access in safe mode (not network drives. Desktop is a nice easy place)
11. Now that you have downloaded you will need to reboot back into safe mode (the Nvidia drivers won’t install because there is a previous installation that requires a restart… thanks Windows
12. Once rebooted, run the Nvidia installation.
    If you check the Display Adapters in Device manager after the installation you will see that it’ll just list “NVIDIA GeForce 7950 GX2″
13. Reboot again (normal boot this time, not safe mode) and if all went well you should now have your Windows 7 Desktop all up and running pretty like.

I don’t know if this is the best way of installing these drivers but I just know that it worked for me.

If it worked for you, or you are just feeling nice. Give it a digg or let me know on twitter or in a comment how you went.

Enjoy

I normally don’t weigh into the Mac vs PC debate all that much, unless it’s actually worth while and meaningfull. But this i had to blog as i thought it was quite funny and clever.

Mac vs PC - The climate edition

[Original Digg Link]

I must admit that I do have a soft spot for OSX and Apple in general. I’m a designer after all. But what I can’t stand is the ignorant, narrow minded, soulless, bad jumper wearing, Steve Jobs loving, Mac Book Air F*&^ tools that believe that there over priced white box is the greatest thing since sliced bread and that just buy owning one they are above all others.

Well, an article on allheadlinenews defaintly made me chuckle;

Vancouver, British Columbia (AHN)– The Linux running on a Sony Vaio remained undefeated at the end of a three-way computer hacking challenge Friday at the CanSecWest conference.Sponsors had wagered three laptops to anyone who could hack into one of the systems and run their own software. A $20,000 cash prize sweetened the deal.

The MacBook Air went first; Independent Security Evaluators’ Charlie Miller took the Mac after about two minutes work on Thursday. Miller took home $10,000, courtesy of 3Com’s TippingPoint division, in addition to the new laptop.

After two days of work, Shane Macaulay finally cracked the tiny Fujitsu laptop running Vista on Friday, with a little help from his friends.

Two minutes I tells ya! Two MINUTES!Do you know why you believe that the MAC is more secure? Because why would anyone in their right mind try to attack something that has only 4.3% of the market! Even Vista has a bigger market share (7.6%) then OSX and it’s a dog of an OS.

Put that in your white, incredibly aesthetic pipe and smoke it! :)

Writing 642-436 or 70-293 should not be complicated for a 70-294 student who has done neither 70-536 nor 650-393.

The latest status report in Microsoft’s U.S. antitrust case mentions that the company has submitted a build of Windows 7, the next version of the PC operating system, for review by the technical committee involved in the case. The report was filed last week, but it slipped under the radar until it was noted within the last day by Information Week and others.

Here’s the full report: PDF, 23 pages. And here are excerpts from the report’s Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 references:

As noted in the prior status report, as the scheduled expiration of the relevant portions of the Final Judgment approached, the TC [Technical Committee] identified a number of remaining middleware-related bugs and requested that Microsoft address these issues. Microsoft has corrected most of these issues, and the TC has tested the fixes. Microsoft has included these corrections in XP SP 3 or Vista SP 1, as appropriate. A remaining bug in the “Open With” feature will be corrected in “Windows 7,” the announced successor to Windows Vista. The TC and Microsoft continue to discuss another middleware issue, which the TC has sought to have Microsoft include in Windows 7.

In addition, the TC has begun to review Windows 7 itself. Microsoft recently supplied the TC with a build of Windows 7, and is discussing TC testing going forward. The TC will conduct middleware-related tests on future builds of Windows 7.

Plaintiffs reported in the last status report on their agreement with Microsoft to resolve any Final Judgment concerns relating to the desktop search functionality in Windows Vista (“Desktop Search”). The TC reviewed Microsoft’s implementation of the changes agreed to, and Microsoft included the new Desktop Search features in Vista SP 1, which Microsoft recently released to OEMs.

Contrary to previous rumors of Microsoft planning a Windows 7 release sometime in 2009, Microsoft has apparently gotten in touch with WinVistaClub and set the record straight: Windows 7 is in “planning stages,” and development will take approximately three years. Microsoft wouldn’t comment on that supposed leak a while back, and of course denied any implications that development was being accelerated to make up for Vista shortcomings.

I’m a bit of a fan of office 2007. I like the ribon tool bar and the countless other improvments that Microsoft have made to the Office suite. I also use Outlook 2007. Outlook 2007 I’ve been quite dissapointed with. They don’t seem to have fixed any of the issues that plauged 2003 but a review of Office 2007 and it’s contents is for another day.

Anyone who has installed Outlook 2007 knows that you need to install Microsoft Desktop Search 3 with it in order to quickly search your email.

Before you all jump up and down screaming about Google Desktop don’t worry. I use it religiously to search my stupid amount of Backup Hard Drives for all my precious content. But I don’t like using it in Outlook. Too many seperate windows. In My Option Desktop Search 3 is better then Google Desktop in Outlook 07.

But how the F*&^ did they stuff up the indexing of files!? How is it that Google does such a brillient job of indexing my PC and Microsoft’s software designed to run on Microsofts OS can’t even find it’self!?

Not only can’t it find anything but it also replaces the decent working Search Companion…

It’s time to remove that and bring back the Good ol’ dog (I’ve actualy removed that dog as it was very anoying. Tweak XP has a nice setting to use the classic search in Explorer – still the best search tool Microsoft has made… how sad)

Here is how you bring back the Dog or the Clasic search in Explorer:

Open RegEdit (Start > Run > regedit).

Find the following : HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows Desktop Search\DS

Double-click on ‘ShowStartSearchBand’ and set the value to ‘0′. Close that and you’re done, the next time you click ‘Search’ in explorer, the old, reliable search companion will appear.

This applies to operating systems before Windows Vista

Happy searching.

A simple question: what Microsoft product could have used a little more polish before release? The answer is quite astounding.

Decide for yourself

We would just like to thank Bill Gates for his honesty and his openness

I fresh install XP roughly every 4 to 6 months depending on how my system is running. There is no questioning that XP slows down considerably after months of heavy use – it becomes fatty and bloated, takes what seems an lifetime to boot up – time I’ll never get back – and just runs like a piece of shit.

This is no good for me, I need everything running snappy! I’m a full time designer and developer and can’t wait for a pallet tool to select 20 – 30 seconds after I’ve clicked it, not matter what load my PC is under – and this is no slow PC.

“There are tools to clean your system” you say. Well I stick my thumb at your so called tools that install more crap onto your PC then you had there in the first place and do a half-arsed job of cleaning the system anyhow.

“How about disk images?” Yes, all good and well for a quick recovery if something goes wrong – but I still prefer the fresh start.

No, the best way to get something is to get it fresh and there is no fresher then a 8pass DBAN and clean install of XP!

This isn’t going to be some guide on how to use DBAN or make a slipstream XP, rather it is just some useless copy to introduce what is really just a list of what I install.

Starting fresh does has some down points. The most notable (to me) is having to digg around for all my software (no that link has nothing to do with the sentence, i just like digg).

So I thought to my self one evening that i might just make a list and share it with everyone who cares – and without further bullshit I give you said list:

1. DBAN Hard Drive
2. Install XP SP2 (Slipstream CD)
3. Install All Updates + Drivers
   1. Nvidia Driver
   2. Creative Labs X-Fi Driver
4. Connect to network
5. Install Firefox + addons
   1. Firebug
   2. Foxmarks
   3. Google Toolbar
   4. Net Usage Item
6. Install Kaspersky Anti-Virus
7. Install Office 2007
8. Install Updates
9. Install Adobe Creative Suite CS3 Master Collection
10. Install Royale Noir theme
11. Install XP Power Tool PowerUI
12. Install XP Power Tool ClearType Tuner
13. Install RocketDock
14. Install Synergy2
15. Install Tredosoft Multiple IE (for site testing)
16. Install WinRar
17. Install Google Desktop
18. Install FileZilla (testing version 3 at time of writing)
19. Install HeidiSQL
20. Install Dev-PHP
21. Install and Schedule Driveimage XML (dixml.exe /bF /t”G:\” /v /s- /c)

So there you have it. Really just some links in one place for each time I format my workstation. If you have any sugestions that I should add to this list I would be more then happy to hear them. So please, post a comment, just say hi – just to let me know you are reading.

Ta Ta.

The aging, but ever popular OS, Windows XP, is to receive an unexpected gift if the form of a 10% speed boost.

Windows XP Service Pack 3 build 3244 is now twice as fast as Windows Vista in the OfficeBench benchmark program.

They used a Dell XPS M1710 laptop with 2GHz Core 2 Duo CPU, 1GB of RAM and nVidia GeForce Go 7900GS video. The machine runs Microsoft Office 2007.

“Since SP3 was supposed to be mostly a bug-fix/patch consolidation release, the unexpected speed boost comes as a nice bonus,” Craig Barth, Devil Mountain’s chief technology officer, said on his blog. “In fact, XP SP3 is shaping up to be a ‘must-have’ update for the majority of users who are still running Redmond’s not-so-latest and greatest desktop OS.”

Windows XP SP3 Release Candidate has been issued to about 15,000 testers, Microsoft said. The new Service Pack 3 for Microsoft’s previous operating system will feature more than 1,000 hot fixes and patches that have been issued in the past three years, as well as at least four new features, some of which will be ports of Vista tools.

This is a huge boost to XP as SP1 (Service Pack 1) for windows Vista has left everyone with a sour taste in their mouth and should see vista continue on as the prefered OS well into 2008 – 09, or until Microsoft can get there act to gether and release SP2 for vista with everything that was promised for Vista and Vista SP1.

You don’t need a hardware switch to share one keyboard and mouse amongst several different computers. All you need is the free, cross-platform application, Synergy.Synergy connects one keyboard and mouse to any computer on your network, making a dual- or triple-computer setup work more like a dual- or triple-monitor setup. Synergy even allows you to share clipboard data across your computers and operating systems.

Today I’ll detail how to set up Synergy on your home network to control all of your desktops with one mouse and keyboard.

How it works

Synergy uses one computer as a server – that’s the computer that will be sharing its keyboard and mouse. The rest of your computers – the ones you want to control – will need to be set up as Synergy clients.

The great part about Synergy is that you can customize the program to work with the layout of your computers. For example, if you’ve got your MacBook running to the left of your Windows PC, you can set up Synergy so that moving your mouse to the left of your Windows monitor will seamlessly jump your mouse across virtual space where it lands safely on your Mac. Whichever desktop currently holds your mouse is also the desktop to which your keyboard’s keystrokes will be sent. Make sense? Add to that Synergy’s clipboard sharing and you’ve got one helluva convergence app.

Click here for detailed install instructions (ignore the “Hack Attack” in the heading, this is not a hack by any means, and probably doesn’t do the original post any justice.)