Musings from a Tech Cowboy

My WebSites



Our Apple iWeb site on .Mac A place to host videos and photos as well as blog with the new iWeb

Our Apple Homepage Great, easy publishing from any Mac!

Stanzel.com Occasionally used to post video and try different types of htmland hosting

Blog

September 21

Windows Live Wave 3 Beta

Time to try it out. Install it from http://downloads.live.com

This is posted using the new WL Writer. lots of new stuff there like the video tools.

things I’ve noticed so far.

created a group in Messenger called Family then thought maybe it should be Stanzel Family. I don’t see anyway to delete the first group, even though I haven’t invited anyone
not sure I know what a group is. all the links to the websites are greyed out.
Movie maker add-ins take you to a page that talks about Gallery and Movie Maker add-ins at the top but the link for flickr seems to be just for photos. references that it’s already setup in gallery which it is, but doesn’t show in the options in MM.
personal text in the groups invite send setup doesn’t show up in the invite.

Looks interesting.

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June 27

My Brother, at it again.

April 08

Dash Express - GPS plus cellular network for traffic based routing

I signed up to be a Dash Express beta tester tonight from this Gizmodo post. I don't drive nearly as much in Boulder as i used to in Seattle, but it would still be great to get into the test.

I needed to run an app on Windows XP that just wouldn't work on Vista or via Virtual PC becuase of some old usb to serial drivers, so as you can see below I went back to a dual-boot pc. Scary that I had to start with 72 patches, but really a nice improvement that I could do them all at once. I remember a clean install used to be a whole series of reboot, windows update, reboot, WU, etc.

Update: of course it wasn't just one run at Windows Update but this is still great to only have 2 more patches after IE7 was one of the first 72. I worked on the original WU back in 1997 getting an update policy in place that the OEMs would accept and dealing with the control issues for who should offer driver updates.

Live Collections and Search

So I see the cool VE maps on some of the celebrity collections and think I need to get one of those myself. I go to my live.com page and can't seem to figure out what category to look in. Why can't the search box before for the current task I'm doing - adding stuff to live.com. Search should work as a feature for all services. ugh.

Vista won't boot after XP install

Here's one that baffled me for awhile today. I installed Windows XP on a Windows Vista box and Vista wouldn't boot again. Didn't even get a boot selector. Of course, the solution is obvious once you think of it, XP isn't aware of Vista so the only way to dual boot without messing with the config is to install XP first then Vista. Background and instructions are in the Microsoft support KB article here. Steps clipped below.

To resolve these issues, follow these steps.

Note You can run the commands in the following procedure by using the command prompt. If you run these commands in Windows Vista, run them at a command prompt that has elevated user rights. To do this, click Start, click Accessories, right-click the command-prompt shortcut, and then click Run as Administrator.

Use Bootsect.exe to restore the Windows Vista MBR and the boot code that transfers control to the Windows Boot Manager program. To do this, type the following command at a command prompt: Drive:\boot\ Bootsect.exe –NT60 All

In this command, Drive is the drive where the Windows Vista installation media is located.

Note The boot folder for this step is on the DVD drive.

Use Bcdedit.exe to manually create an entry in the BCD Boot.ini file for the earlier version of the Windows operating system. To do this, type the following commands at a command prompt.

Note In these commands, Drive is the drive where Windows Vista is installed.

•	Drive:\Windows\system32\Bcdedit –create {ntldr} –d “Description for earlier Windows version” Note In this command, Description for earlier Windows version can be any text that you want. For example, Description for earlier Windows version can be "Windows XP” or “Windows Server 2003."
•	Drive:\Windows\system32\Bcdedit –set {ntldr} device partition=x: Note In this command, x: is the drive letter for the active partition.
•	Drive:\Windows\system32\Bcdedit –set {ntldr} path \ntldr
•	Drive:\Windows\system32\Bcdedit –displayorder {ntldr} –addlast

Restart the computer.

Haven't been blogging - maybe I should?

I obviously haven't been blogging, not that I had a big fan base that was disappointed becuase of this or anything. I think I'll seperate out my family stuff to my personal Live ID (stanzel.com domain hosted by Windows Live) and use that plus the .Mac and iWeb stuff from Apple to host family photos and personal stuff. So that leaves this to be my place to post tech news of interest, musings and of course my favorite, a place to store a few tech support tips I might need again someday.

August 16

Microsoft Live Labs: Photosynth

This is extremely cool and show the incredible potential of bringing the collective experiences of many people together. I've had a chance to play with this internally and think it's a blow you away experience the first time you see it. The use of the SeaDragon technology is amazing.

Link to Microsoft Live Labs: Photosynth

August 14

Trying out Windows Live Writer

noticed this post from the VE team tonight(morning) and decided to give Windows Live Writer a try.

I've moved to Boulder to help the VE team win in mapping and local search. Here's my office

Deleting Windows Live OneCare backups

I really like the simplicity and ease of Windows Live OneCare but sometimes it doesn't let me do what I think it should. BTW, I just saw a report saying it was #2 in retail in it's second month - congrats to the team!

I moved a firewire hard drive from one PC to another and needed to delete the 3000+ backup files. Doesn't work, access denied. So I tried the support site and found a great FAQ, but it actually doesn't work. So with an extra 15mins on my hand while my daughter was napping, I tried calling tech support. to my surprise, they answered quickly and found a solution with just two sessions on hold. So here it is if you find yourself in the same spot....

cmd
cacls "e:\<onecare backup folder>" /t /g administrators:f

BUT this only deletes the first 999 .zip files, you have to manually delete the rest but the command line above fixes the permissions so it's possible to do so.

happy computing...