Andrew Busey: My Musings

Well apparently some part of my Vista boot record or something in the partiion manager got corrupted and late yesterday afternoon Vista decide to stop booting up for me.  At first, I though this was a hardware failure - maybe the bios or the motherboard or something.  Some of the lights on the front of my PC were yellow.  Anyway, after messing around with everything I could come up with to try to fix or recover from this problem I called Dell tech support.  I actually got someone knowledgeable and helpful at about 2AM.  He helped me through some ideas and eventually suggested this was probably some kind of boot record/partition corruption.  

So today I worked to solve this problem.  The good news is I fixed it.  The bad news is it cost me $150 in hardward and software and about ten hours.  That’s a lot of wasted time.  Anyway, I’m going to go get a drink now because if I stay near this computer much longer I’m likely to break something.  (I already got so made I smashed a keyboard… man did this piss me off.) 

After I cool down I’ll have a whole right up on what I’ve learned about repairing Vista.  Also, I’m going to do another right up about some magical thing called Windows Recovery Environment.  Which according to all the blog entries (including one from Jim Allchin) should solve problems like mine with ease.  However, if it actually exists I can neither find it or figure out how to use it…  And I like to think I’m pretty good at this kind of stuff.  Anyway, it might be related to Windows PE, but I’m not entirely sure.  

Anyway, I’m going to stop now before I go off on a full rant.  I’m hungry and mad, a bad combination.  Perhaps a nice glass of Faust (Faust is an awesome new cab from the folks that make Quintessa, which is one of my favorite wines) at Cru will calm me down. 

I just read this article called Apple 2.0 from the Business 2.0 sight.  It says that iTunes and Quicktime are not compatible with Vista.  I am currently running Vista with iTunes and Quicktime and I haven’t had to install any work arounds or do anything weird.  (Unlike dealing with my video card.)  

I have not attempted to hook up my iPod (because I use it only for travel and it’s already configured with another computer) yet and when I installed iTunes it did seem to warn me that there might be an issue here.  But this doesn’t mean that iTunes is broken.  I’m typing this entry on a computer with Vista Ultimate Edition and running iTunes.  I’ve also watched several movie previews on this computer in Quicktime.  I especially like the trailer for 300 - I’m really looking forward to that movie.

My only gripe so far is I cannot seem to prevent Quicktime from taking over every video file type.  Personally I’d rather use Media Player for some things.  Oh well the conflict between players taking over file types from each other is nothing new.  I wish they’d knock it off.

nVidia released a new driver today that fixed the problem with the Apple 30″ LCD.  So now that Vista is running 2560×1600 I can actually use it.  I’ve installed Office 2007 and will start experimenting with that soon.

The key thing:  World of Warcraft seems to be running great.  LOL. 

Anyway, so far I’ve just been configuring things to my liking so I don’t have much to report.  My biggest issues now are finding my old iTunes playlists and stupid crap like that.  I did a fresh install but I guess that still saves a copy of all your crap, which is kind of convenient. 

Anyway the UI is nice and things seem to be running smoothly now, another update will soon follow.

OK, so my last post was perhaps a little to vitriolic, but I was pretty pissed.   I kept getting an empty blackscreen after the first reboot.  Anyway, I will say that Microsoft’s tech support was helpful, I only wish I hadn’t needed to call them.  It turns out I had to unplug all my USB devices to install Vista.  Wow, never would have thought of that.  I’m pretty computer saavy and I’m beginning to wonder how normal people ever get this crap to work.

Oh, even better, I had to download a driver from Dell (for my hard drive, which admittedly is Raid) to get it to do a clean install.  What fun.  I had to guess which driver.

Anyway, I finally got it working.  Although I’m still languishing in the world of 1280×800 which really pisses me off.  But I finally got to the bottom of it.  Apparently this is nVidia’s fault.  The nVidia 8800 GTX (top end video card) is stuck in 1280×800 because of a driver problem.  So if you are considering Vista, an nVidia 8800 card, and/or an Apple 30″ LCD… they do not currently work together.  Supposedly the Dell 30″ works.  Here is the quote:

Well after two hours I have Vista working.  It looks AWESOME in 1280×800 on my 30″ LCD.  WTF.  I’m not sure if it is Microsoft or NVidia who is at fault, but when you buy Vista Ultimate it should WORK.  I mean it is $259 for the upgrade and it is targetted at enthusiasts and gamers.  I have an NVidia 8800 GTX card in my PC.  Right now this is the best card out there.  It ran awesome on Windows XP SP2…. in 2560×1600.  Now the highest available resolution is 1280×800. 

This operating system has been in development for years and they still released it too soon. 

I guess I’m going to have to reinstall XP on this computer.  What fun.  Like I wanted to waste five hours on this crap. 

So maybe I’m part of the problem, because I like to buy the newest stuff which encourages the release of crappy products.  But when I have to think about downgrading a $600 video card because Vista won’t work with it, that is just retarded.  Microsoft and NVidia should be ashamed of themselves.

[ Buy from Amazon] [ Official Site ] [ Gamespot: 8.1 Users: 8.0 ]

This is a cool PC game, probably the best since World of Warcraft.  I’m sure it will also make a great console game at some point as well. It is also a better sequel, at least IMO.  Of course, that wouldn’t have been hard in Battlefield series, since the other one wouldn’t run on my computer, which I now realize is a shame since this is a good game and I think its predecessor was probably good too.  (BTW, the reason it didn’t run wasn’t because my computer wasn’t powerful enough, it had some weird issues with the resolutions I use.)

Battlefield 2142 is a first person shooter that simulates military combat.  It allows games of up to 64 players (32 per team) in opposing factions.  (The EU vs. PAC). 

You can choose one of four options:

• Recon:  This is basically a sniper.  They get sniper rifles, explosives, and camouflage.
• Assault:  Basic infrantry.  They get assault rifles and med packs.
• Engineer:  Good at killing armor and air.  They get something akin to a stinger missle launcher.  They can also repair armor, cars, air, etc.  They also get mines, which are quite nice.
• Support:  These are heavy machine gunners.  They can also resupply (provide more ammo).

The other interesting thing about this game is that you can get in vehicles such as tanks, mechs (large, heavily armed and armored robot looking things), cars (little dune buggie type vehicles with a machine gun turret), and various helicopters.  Tanks and mechs are really fun.  You can see the list of vehicles here.

The commander can also issue orders to people and squads (up to six players per squad).   A commander can also launch a UAV to monitor enemy troop positions and movement and can bombard them with an orbital strike. 

GOOD:  It’s fun to play.  32v32 is a blast.  It seems to be relatively easy to find game servers that are popular.  You can play a game pretty quickly, often around 30 minutes, and they are a blast.  You usually get some good adrenaline rushes.  I also admit to have a significant bias towards games where you play against or with other people as opposed to alone.  This is one of only three games I’ve found myself playing for any reasonable amount of time in the last few years (the other two are World of Warcraft and Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne - I’ll discuss them later).

BAD:  The game doesn’t handle Alt-Tabbing very well which I find really annoying.  It also could have better game finding and matching features, sometimes joining with a friend is a royal pain because you have to keep hitting refresh until a slot on a server opens up and then sometimes it puts you on a different team.  Finally, the documentation pretty much sucks, but hey it’s a game and you’ll figure it out.

COOL BONUS:  It does have a pretty cool webpage showing your ranks and stuff.  Ranks that you get from playing and badges/awards (which are cool) lead to unlocks (better gear).   This is probably makes the game ten times more interesting.

SEE:  LokiTX (that’s me!)