Just installed Windows Server 2012 and selected United Kingdom for language and keyboard layout during the install, just like I have done for every other Windows install in the last 15 years.
Broken. The server comes up in a US timezone and with US keyboard layout.
How does this stuff even get out the door? It’s not released, so much as inflicted upon us.
I just spent most of a day failing to get Windows Embedded Standard 7 deploying via Windows Deployment Services (WDS). We have some IBASE SI-08 PC’s nailed on to some flat screen monitors which we want to use for digital signage. They came pre-packaged with some truly awful management software running on Windows Embedded Standard 7. We’ve decided to dump the free software and use PADS 4 instead and now we’re thinking about deploying our own Windows Embedded image with PADS instead of the pre-installed image.
I already have WDS installed and running on Windows Server 2012 and have used that to deploy vanilla Windows 7, 8 and Server 2012 images over the network.
After downloading the Windows Embedded 7 Standard ISO from MSDN and adding the WIM file from the Sources folder we tried PXE booting the device and got in as usual (had to fiddle with the BIOS to enable network boot, but wasn’t hard to find). I approved the request on the server via the WDS UI as usual and the boot image then fails to load. 0x00000001. A device connected to the system isn't responding.
This turned out to be a network time out issue, probably caused by incompatible packet sizes. WDS 2012 has an auto-negotiate feature which can be switched off in the WDS server properties. In the TFTP tab clear Enable variable window extension.
This moves us along. The boot image now boots, and we get a Windows Setup GUI, but it errors out with: WdsClient: An error occurred while starting networking: a matching network card driver was not found in this image. Please have your administrator add the network driver for this machine to the Windows PE image on the Windows Deployment Services server.
According to the specs for SI-08 we need a RealTek network driver so we download and unzip that and add it to WDS and apply it to the boot image. Boot again and we get along a little more. We give the setup our locale (English: UK) and admin logon credentials and then get to choose an install image. Or we would except it won’t show us any. The event log on the server shows errors when enumerating the images. We reboot the server. Now the WDS service will not start. We have event ID 257 An error occurred while trying to start the Windows Deployment Server (0xC1020201) in the event log and An error occurred while refreshing the image cache.
I removed and re-added the WDS role, but got the same problem. I did it again and this time I deleted the c:\remoteinstall folder, trashing my handful of install images (the ISOs are still around so adding them back should be simple enough). The WDS service now starts OK. I add the Windows Embedded 7 Standard install image and the x86 boot images again and try to install on a test laptop. It gets through to the Windows Setup OK but can’t offer me an install image. The errors are back again on the WDS server and the service won’t restart again after a reboot.
There’s clearly something fishy about this WIM image file and a bit of googling around WDS and Windows Embedded Standard 7 reveals that the WIMs are not directly deployable via WDS.
It looks like WDS will let me add the WIM, but then breaks when asked to enumerate them for a client or when restarting the WDS service. This time I deleted just the Windows Embedded Standard 7 image via the WDS UI, which works even without the service running, and then the WDS service starts.
I loved the original Portal game and the sequel is just as good, but is now a full length game. The plot carries on from the original. The same excellent voice-acting and humour are there along with some backstory. It’s great to play a game that doesn’t simply rely on blasting things, unlike almost every other game on Xbox.
Portal 2 also adds an online or split screen multiplayer mode. I’ve only played the first few levels of this so far, but it’s good stuff. Just need to find someone to play online with. :-)
This is a TV series based on the Terminator films. It is set after Terminator 2 and focuses on Sarah’s struggle to bring John up to be the future leader of humanity and to keep him safe from SkyNet’s continuing efforts to kill him, while also attempting to prevent SkyNet’s invention by changing key events in the present. They are joined by a reprogrammed Terminator, called Cameron, played by Summer Glau.
They made two series, with a total of 31 40-minute episodes so there is plenty to watch. On the down side it doesn’t look like they will make any more, so the story just runs out without conclusion. On the up side, Summer Glau makes a fantastic Terminator. Throughout the series there are constant minor things that she does that indicate that her character is more than just a robot killing machine, such as taking up dancing and helping a cancer patient. It seems likely to me that the plot would develop until they came to the realisation that preventing SkyNet from being built isn’t going to work – the time travel thing makes it too simple to sidestep and even if you succeed, humanity would just redevelop something similar a little later. The real solution is to convince SkyNet (or some similar AI faction) that humanity can be co-existed with and doesn’t need to be exterminated. I think that this is where John & Cameron’s relationship would have gone if the series had continued.
The rest of the cast are also excellent and there are many mini-plots with flashbacks to the future war providing additional depth to the main story. Religion gets the usual free ride, as ex-FBI agent Ellison “teaches” a young AI, called John Henry, about the value of human life, although there were hints that this wasn’t necessarily being accepted uncritically and this could have developed had the show continued. There was also a tendency to present Cameron as sexy-Terminator, which was disappointing. As an AI combat chassis specialising in infiltration there was plenty of scope for playing down the sexy and many fashion-is-bullshit-anyway gags.
My laptop has a legacy Windows 7 boot image on it that I want to preserve, but I want to also install Windows 8 and set that up as a development box so I can work on the move if necessary.
I used the built in Disk Management to shrink my Windows 7 partition and create ~200 GB free space, which I left unallocated.
I boot the Windows 8 install disk, create a 128 GB partition and install Windows and some dev tools. Ok so far – I can boot back to Windows 7 whenever I want to.
Next I decide to create another partition for data, so in future I can reinstall Windows without worrying about rebuilding source code repositories’ working folders, etc. I use Disk Management in Windows 8 (WinKey+X to access a handy cheat popup of tools). It warns me that to do this it will need to convert the drive to Dynamic Disks or something. Hmm.
Cancel and reboot to Windows 7. Same thing. Oh well. I can’t be the first person in the world to want more than 3 partitions. I accept the warning and watch as the partitions change from Basic to Dynamic.
I reboot. Windows 8 goes into repair mode and starts fixing things. After a few minutes it lets me login, but I’m worried I didn’t get asked whether I wanted Windows 7 or Windows 8. I reboot. Straight back to Windows 8 – no way to boot to Windows 7.
Disk Management in Windows 8 shows my Windows 8 partition and my new Data partition as both being Basic again. The other partitions are gone – just showing as Unallocated space. Oopsy. Not the end of the world and I intended to rebuild my Windows 7 at some point, just not right now.
Wikipedia has some good info on basic disk partitioning. It seems that there really is a cliff after 3/4 partitions. My laptop already had a small FAT32 partition and a recovery partition that were factory installed, so adding my 5th partition triggered some pretty drastic changes (and a warning I, um, ignored, *ahem*).
TestDisk is a free utility that I ran from within Windows 8 which showed my my old partitions and let me undelete them.
Then I booted from a Windows 7 Repair disk I made ages ago and lobbed into a desk drawer. This auto-detected boot problems and fixed them. Now the pretty Windows 8 boot loader shows me two options: “Windows 8 Enterprise” & “Windows 7 Professional (recovered)” both of which boot.
Frequent power cuts have caused my dev workstation to restart unexpectedly a few times recently. This isn’t really a problem for individual desktops, but as this machine runs Hyper-V and hosts 20+ virtual machines there’s some small risk that sudden power failure might leave one or more boxes in an inconsistent state leading to some work to repair them once power is restored. Seems like a no-brainer: stick an uninterruptable power supply (UPS) on and do a clean shutdown before the juice runs out.
I’ve not bought a UPS before so was not really sure what to go for. This Dell Precision T7600 chassis is rated for 1300W, but I’ve no idea what it actually consumes or how variable that might be. In the end I got an APC Smart-UPS 1500 for around £500, which reports my current load, for the workstation and one monitor, as around 20% loading giving 80 minutes of battery time.
Windows Server 2008 R2 detected the battery automatically when I connected the UPS to the server via a USB lead and integrates it with power options just like with a Windows laptop. I configured a new power plan and set the critical level to 50% and the action to Shutdown, which is the only one available, expecting this to initiate the same shutdown you get from Start > Shut Down.
I switched the power to the UPS off and the battery took over. After 30 minutes it got to 50% remaining. A crash message window appeared briefly before the server was dropped. It wasn’t a nice Windows shutdown – it just gutted itself!
Upon power restore we get asked the “unexplained shutdown” question and the VMs are “Off” when I was expecting them to be “Saved”. Not good. More Microsoft stuff that doesn’t work out of the box. Worse is that it all looks OK, until you try it.
Fortunately the UPS comes with its own monitoring system, APC PowerChute, which monitors the battery and does do a proper shutdown. It’s just a shame I have to install some vendor-specific crapware to achieve something that Windows can clearly handle itself (if only it were not bugged).
Borderlands 2 is very similar to the original. It keeps the 4-player co-op, cartoon-like graphics, dark humour and extreme violence. I stopped playing the original after the first play though, not realising that things would be more challenging on the second attempt and consistently difficult on the third having capped at level 50. I aim to keep this sequel and keep going back to it.
Borderlands 2 has damage modifiers similar to the first, which I’ve summarised below. Using the right weapon against the right enemy is important and some enemies are resistant to some effects (Crystalisks are immune to incendiary, shock and corrosive, for example – punching their legs is effective), so I generally keep an incendiary (up), shock (left) and corrosive (right) weapon equipped with an unmodified, slagged or explosive in the fourth slot (down). Below are the modifiers for the second play-through (True Vault Hunter mode) – the first play through has similar bonuses and penalties, but much reduced.
| Flesh | Shields | Armour | |
| Incendiary | 175% | 75% | 75% |
| Shock | 100% | 150% | 100% |
| Corrosive | 60% | 40% | 175% |
| Explosive | 200% | 160% | 200% |
| Slagg | Other weapons do double damage (200%) | ||
Incendiary and Corrosive are strong against flesh and armour respectively, but weak against the others, so you have to switch around. Electricity is strong against shields, but neutral against the rest, but you are still losing out by missing the bonus you would have if you swapped, although the Mecromancer’s skills can focus on electricity making a single-damage build possible.
Explosive does its normal damage, plus the same in splash damage, so can hit multiple enemies at once and does both (so double damage) if you hit. This doesn’t apply to critical hits though and doesn’t latch an elemental effect, so the other elemental types still seem stronger to me. Also, the splash area seems quite small.
A slagged enemy takes double damage, but it doesn’t last long and you have to swap weapons to take advantage of it so it can be a pain if soloing. It can also be applied by grenades and some of the character skills.
Half way through your second play through your character will cap at level 50 and the environment will also cap at that level, but with badasses being a level or two higher as usual, so the game stabilises. Any golden keys used will yield rare level 50 items so save them up until you hit the cap. Moxii also gives 2 items if you tip her, but I’m not sure if they follow the cap as well or whether they are preset to lower levels.
I’ve not finished True Vault Hunter mode yet. It seems the impending update will add a 6th character, a third play through and raise the cap to 61.
