Windows 7 RC Status Update

I was forced to rebuild my last Windows 7 Beta machine (an HP TX2510 convertable tablet pc) to the RC last night, as on July 1 it started shutting down every two hours in order to gently remind me that it was expiring. Oh bother! As I wasn't really that worried with preserving the state of the machine, I just reinstalled the OS, leaving the drive intact, so that I could reinstall everything necessary and still have it local.

I was amazed at the difference that just a few months could make in the smoothness of the process. This was the very first machine I moved to Windows 7, and while a fairly new technology, it nevertheless required a substantial amount of work to get drivers to work (well). This time, however, every single driver loaded during the install, including a third-party beta for the fingerprint reader, with one tiny exception. That being the driver for the commercial infrared sensor for the pop-out media center controller. One stop to HP.com was all that was required to solve that. Even the video drivers were correct, although it has ended up show the screen as 1-2 monitors in one. A little digging revealed that this is actually how HP implemented the hardware. Oh well, it seems to work just fine.

I am really looking forward to next March, when I get to upgrade all these machine yet again.

My WHS Has a Tweeter Account!

A couple of days ago, while doing my occasional review of Add-ins at WeGotServed.com, I found an add-in that allows my WHS to send out status updates as tweets, rather than email [http://www.whsplus.com/2009/06/10/whstweet/]. This has several benefits in that it doesn't clog up my Blackberry with personal messages that I have to manage, yet still allows me to have fairly instantaneous notification of issues on my home network, through my UberTwitter client. To do this, I had to create @jbharmanWHS account for my WHS to use to send, so that I don't spam my work colleagues with status notifications. So far, so good. We shall see how this lasts. Oh, by the way: in just 48 hours, @jbharmanWHS has already received 4 bogus (spam/porno) follow requests. Good thing I have my settings set to protected.

Windows 7 RC vs. WHS PP2

I have installed on 3 machines the Windows 7 RC, as well as a Tablet PC that I have left (for the time being) at the Windows 7 Beta. Without exception, all four machines are exhibiting bizarre behavior  in regards to Windows Home Server (WHS) which has recently been upgraded to Power Pack 2. WHS Forum members assure me that I have introduced 'networking issues', which clearly cannot be the case as I am able to access shares and files from any of the machine to the WHS and the same in reverse. Further, each of the machines run the WHS Connector software just fine and backup daily, as long as the default backup works. Therein lies the rub!

If you attempt to actually use the Connector console either from any of the client machines or from the WHS to the client, nothing at all happens. Literally! Eventually, the client software will give a message that it is unable to connect to the WHS and if it was recently rebooted to wait just a little longer. From the WHS side, after several minutes a message appears saying that apparently the Client machine is offline. However, the same Connector software tray icon will instantly start a backup, open the Software shares on the WHS, etc. And, the other 5 machines running Vista work perfectly. If I dual boot any of these Windows 7 machines into Vista, they instantly connect. Keep in mind that through all this, I can still connect using Windows networking and copy and move files in either direction from and to any of these machine as well as to the Internet.

What is further interesting is the the WHS Forum is FULL of people experiencing the exact same issues. Any yet, they continue to insist that networking issues have been introduced and that machines that worked perfectly fine before the PP2 upgrade have somehow been changed. I am very frustrated but expect that eventually even the most obtuse will see that there is a systemic issue here that needs to be addressed. In the end, I have one machine that will not backup at all because I cannot configure and exclude one problem drive that I can't do away with as it contains my entire iTunes library. Here's hoping that I don't do something stupid to damage my only machine not backed up!

Today at Church, 4 mothers sang, including the oldest mother in the congregation, Joyce Wilson @ 92 years of age. It was wonderful!

From Brent's Storm
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Rebuilds for Windows 7 RC

I finished downloading the Windows 7 RC (32- and 64-bit) on Friday morning. I have had my office Media Center PC in and out of Frys Electronics for warranty repairs and all they have done is muck the machine up. I told them it was the Video Card, but they assure me it isn't. It still didn't work longer than 3 minutes before freezing up, so I decided to wipe the OS and load Win7. That didn't work either: after 3 minutes the video would go away. So, I downed the machine, yanked the Video card and replaced it with one I got on sale at NewEgg and wow! The machine is wonderful now and I love Windows 7 Media Center. I left this machine at 32-bit because it is my main iTunes host and I need to move Calibre over to it too for my Sony Reader PRS-700, which can only run on 32-bit.

I am going to retire WHENIM64, my very first machine that used 64-bit full time. It has had XP and Vista 64-bit OS's, but as a single core machine, I think it is time for it to go. My wife has given me an ultimatum on reducing the number of machines drawing power in my office. I will be moving everything to GAMES-V, and bumping that machine to Win7 64-bit, with 8 GB RAM.

On Saturday, I loaded Windows 7 RC on my S10, loading over the top of the existing Beta build. Everything went great, but I am having some permissions issues with the directories that I left there. Shold have worked, but I am not going to spend a whole year with a flaky machine, so I will be wiping it this afternoon, installing fresh, and then restoring from WHS backup the necessary directories.

Today is Pam's birthday and I have been working on her present: a pink S-10. I have bumped the RAM to 2 GB, installed a 500 GB drive with Win7. She also has the original 160 GB drive with the XP and the QuickStart Linux front-end. She can pick which she wants to keep.

Final Upgrades to Lenovo S10

I just finished the 5th and final rebuild of the S10, which will hopefully last me until I upgrade to the RC build and then the RTM. I have now received my 6-cell battery, and have replaced the 250GB 7200 RPM SATAII drive with a 120GB SSD. The performance with this drive is quite exceptional. From boot to use is about 15-18 seconds max, but the most stellar part is that I am now getting 5.5-6.5 hours of battery use, depending on what I am doing and this is using ‘balanced’ mode, not ‘super-saver’, where I could expect even more at the sacrifice of performance.

At this point, I am very satisfied with this machine and Windows 7!

Google Offline

I have been using the new GMail offline functionality for the last few days. It gives you the ability to not only keep using your saved mail online, but to copy it to any specific machine(s) and from thence forward, it will keep a copy on the local machine. It really works well and I look forward to having a copy of former message, along with all the normal search functionality locally, without having to go online. It makes this a LOT more useful.

My New Favorite Machine

My Lenovo S10 now has 2.5GB of RAM, of which 2 GB is usable to the OS. The HD has been upgraded to a 7200 RPM 250 GB model. An additional power supply is on order, as well as a 6-cell battery, to replace the 3-cell one that comes standard. This should dramatically increase the use time. The only piece that I still need to figure out is a compatible WiFi assembly to “N”. It exists in the Lenovo world. I just have to find the right one.

Lenovo S10 Rebuilt and Running Windows 7

While the S10 was running fine with Windows XP Home Edition, there are certain things not present in that version of the OS, especially around networking and shares. For that reason, I had determined that I was going to eventually update the OS.

As I reviewed my hardware, I determined that I had an (essentially) unused 250 GB 2.5” SATA in a USB case. I removed the drive with XP installed and swapped in the empty drive. Hooking up an external USB Sony DVD Burner that I have for just this purpose, I installed 32-bit Windows 7 to a freshly partitioned disk. Wow! 15 minutes later, I had the OS installed and ready to go. I attached the previous XP disk via USB, moved the drivers and other compatible files over. The only driver I needed to load was the Power/Keys Manager, and I was ready to rock and roll.

Did I mention that I had removed the accessible 512 MB memory module and swapped in a 1 GB module that I had available, for a machine max total of 1.5 GB? This machine is VERY impressive in performance and while the battery isn’t spectacular, it should vastly improve when the 6-cell battery arrives.

I am very pleased. Windows 7 is every bit as responsive (if not more so that XP), AND I get this gorgeous UI!

Lenovo IdeaPad S10

This entry is coming via Live Writer on my new Lenovo IdeaPad S10. I have also installed the Phoenix multi-boot Hyper partition on this machine (the Atom processor can’t support simultaneous partitions; it’s one or the other). I will also attempt to post from that partition. The boot time is quite good: about 15 seconds or less.

HP TX2510us Running Windows 7

When I received access to Windows 7 Beta 1 last Thursday, I decided to give Windows 7 at try, as I had heard so many good things about its Tablet capabilities. Scratching my head about whether to install a fresh HD or to do an upgrade, I finally opted for the latter.

The upgrade from Vista Ultimate x64 went very smoothly, although it took some 2.5 hours, most of which was spent backing up and restoring my programs, all of which was done automatically.

My system ran fine, and all the programs worked, etc. Things started to unravel when I attempted to ink or touch. Touch was gone and could not be re-enabled, and inking was almost impossible, as the cursor would back and forth about 1/3 of an inch 3 or 4 times a second.

Additionally, I discovered that even though the screen would auto-rotate when I moved it, the pen stayed in the mode it was in when booted up. Not good!

So, after sleeping on it, I decided to reinstall, over the top of my existing installation, wiping out the current OS, but preserving my file system so that I would not have to move some 100GB of files back to the machine.

This time, it took about 15 minutes to accomplish and was stellar from the start! I installed the HP extensions for keys, etc. and this machine has be a joy to use! I have run into a couple of minor cosmetic quirks with Windows 7, but the stability and performance has been spectacular. I am very impressed! More to follow in the coming days…