Reading Linux Files in Vista

Since I do have to work in Vista sometimes and to play some games, I need to be able to access my music library on my Linux Ext2 drive. I found this handy driver which allows you to have your Ext/Ext2 drive show up as just another letter in Explorer.

The trick to getting this to install in Vista is to Right click on the installer, Properties, and set it to use XP compatibility mode.

Now I don't have to reboot from one OS to the other. Both can see the other's file system perfectly.

Upgrading from Windows to Ubuntu Linux

My name is Drew and I'm officially a Linux convert.

I had this realization this morning. I've got all the Windows programs I currently use working in Ubuntu 7.10, whether it be through Wine or VirtualBox.

When the time comes for me to install other apps, whether they be games like World of Warcraft, or apps like Visual Studio 2008, I'm 100% positive that I'll succeed then, too.

Let me back up a bit. My Sony VAIO laptop came with Vista Business on it. Now contrary to those great Apple ads bashing Vista, my experience with that OS has been almost completely positive. I love the interface, everything runs, and my 3D games run about 90% what they did under XP Pro.

So why would I leave Vista for Ubuntu? Quite simply, I can do everything I used to do in Windows, and more, but on a FREE, open source OS that runs more quickly, more efficiently, is totally customizable, has a massive support base of active users and developers, and I can run multiple virtual machines loaded with any OS on top of the lean Ubuntu OS.

I've been toying with Ubuntu over the last couple months while dual booting with Vista, and lately the only reason I've booted into Vista was to convert my WMVs to MP3 and run some programs I thought would only work in Windows, like Out of the Park Baseball 2007.

However, as of this morning, I have learned that there is nothing I can't run in linux using Wine or VirtualBox.

Wine is a Windows compatibility layer that allows me to run windows apps directly within Ubuntu. I've got OOTP2007 running from an icon on my desktop, and it runs FASTER than it did in Vista, and is 100% functional. I also came upon a great reference for getting World of Warcraft running in Wine, so if I ever resubscribe to WoW, I'll have no problems there either.

VirtualBox is a free product from InnoTek which allows you to run virtual computers on top of Ubuntu Linux. I've got one virtual machine (VM) configured now, which runs Windows XP Pro. When I boot that up, I get a window (fullscreen optional) that contains exactly what you'd see if you booted into XP. The performance is fantastic, and I use it to run the latest version of iTunes, which doesn't seem to run in Wine yet.


I'll be installing Visual Studio 2008 at some point, and I don't expect problems there either.

One thing I love about running Ubuntu is that it just feels clean. It's not bloated, slow, and it boots up every time. Another thing is that the interface is clean and minimalistic. While I love Vista's interface, on my 13" laptop screen, all the bells and whistles seem to get in the way.

The Ubuntu interface is just more intuitive to me, and that may be because I'm a developer and open source software is designed and developed by developers, not teams of corporate marketers and designers. Plus, the idea of open source software appeals to me on many levels, and I'm happy to be "off the corporate teat", as it were.

I'm still dual booting, but now my linux partition dwarfs my windows one, and right now, I have no reason to boot into Vista at all.

Vacation in Aspen

My first time here. Flew into Denver, had a nice snowstorm the first night. Took 6 hours to get to Woody Creek, outside of Aspen.

Staying in house of a friend, free. Nice.

Looking out the window, water dripping off the tin roof. Winter branches clumped with snow. Blue sky, wispy clouds. Steam rising past the window.

It's great to be away from work that has overtaken my consciousness. Nice to have an internet connection, a lifeline. Yeah, haven't completely let go.

Read Fight Club yesterday. Can you tell?

Gigabeat - Toshiba Drops Support

No, that's not an official statement, or even news. If you own a Gigabeat S series, you already know that Toshiba stopped supporting this platform the day they released it. I got mine pretty early on, and I don't think they've released a single firmware update for it.

I was reading ScionGuy's review of the new Zune firmware and software update, and while it looks great, it evoked the bitterness that's been growing towards my Gigabeat since I shelled out a few hundred bucks for it.

I own a Toshiba Gigabeat S30 (read: precursor to the Zune). I think the first model of the Zune looked exactly like the Gigabeat, actually.

It's not that the interface sucks. It doesn't, I like it a lot. The sound and video quality is fine. The feature set is OK. The killer is the dreaded power drain.

The device has two ways to turn it "off". The first is the easily accessible On/Off button on the side. The trick here though is that this doesn't really turn it off, so much as go into power-sucking standby mode.

If you use this button, and then don't use the Gigabeat for a day or two, it will most likely be dead the next time you turn it on...even if you had it fully charged when you turned it "off".

I've seen some folks say this is a "feature" of the OS on the device, the MS Portable Media Center, or PMC. If that's the case, I'd expect this to be a problem for the Zune and any other PMC device.
Apparently if you really want to turn the device OFF, there is a tiny little pin-hole size switch on the bottom left. So if you keep a very sharp object in your pockets at all times, you'll be able to play your device for a stretch 3 days in a row. Or, you might injure yourself bending over.

The power drain kills me and makes this thing almost unusable. I can fully charge it, play it for 5 mins on Friday, and by Monday (it’s been off all weekend), it’s dead again.

Here's the thing: When I turn my MP3 player off, I want it OFF. What's with this standby crap? Save my spot to flash and turn the damn thing off already!

I’ve been patiently awaiting a Rockbox port for this device, but I’m not sure it’ll ever happen. Progress is glacially slow, and at this rate I doubt it'll ever happen. I may have to give up and get something else…I've never been an iPod guy, but if they play MP3s I might go in that direction.

I like the Zune's, but I'm leary of the PMC. If I found that Zune's definitely do not have this battery drain problem, I might consider it.

This is so frustrating for two reasons: 1) It bugs the hell out of me for a company to release a piece of hardware and promptly forget about it, and 2) I really like everything about the device, except the drain. Unfortunately, that's enough to ruin the whole experience.

There's no way in hell that I'm going to buy another Toshiba device, that's for sure. At least Apple and Microsoft are bound to support their hardware after release.

LOL Cats

I created a Picasa album containing my favorite LOLCat pics from icanhascheezburger.com . I've seen these on FARK threads, but never knew there was a nexus of them.

Vista Drag and Drop Explorer Crash

Since I got my Sony VAIO laptop with Windows Vista Business Edition on it, I've had this problem where dragging and dropping files crashes Windows Explorer.

I did a little research and found that it might be due to Shell extensions. If you're having issues with Explorer crashing while using right-click Context menu items, you have a similar problem.

I fixed this problem by downloading a free utility from nirsoft called ShellExView.

This program allows you to enable and disable context menu items, shell extensions, and more.

In my case, explorer crashed while dragging and dropping, so I focused on entries of type "Drag & Drop Handlers".

I disabled and re-enabled items, testing the crash until I found that the offender causing explorer to crash was the Bluetooth Information Exchanger, which handles drags and drops to Drives and Folders.

I know there are others with this same problem, and many may be Sony VAIO owners.

Windows Vista - Access Denied? Cleaning Up Junctions for Sony VAIO

If you have a Sony VAIO, you may have the problem where some of the shortcuts in Windows Explorer give you Access Denied messages that you shouldn't be getting.

What's actually happening is that those are junctions, something Windows NTFS file systems can use to link folders and provider compatibility to older programs. For example, in Windows XP, you had a c:\Documents and Settings\ folder.

In Vista, that is now located at C:\Users\, but in order for Vista to be compatible with older programs that expect the "Documents and Settings", Vista creates a junction that redirects calls to Documents and Settings to c:\Users. These junctions are more than just shortcuts.

On my Sony VAIO laptop, the people at Sony built the drive from an image located on some Y:\ drive, so all my junctions were incorrectly pointing to a non-existent Y drive.

It's easiest if you install SysInternals Junction.exe into your C:\Windows\System32 folder so you can call junction from anywhere at the command prompt.

Open command prompt by typing cmd into the Start Search box.

Type cd\ to get to the root C:\ directory

Type dir /aL /s > junction.txt to recursively view all junctions on your harddrive and output it to the junctions.txt file.

Now you can view all the junctions and ensure that all of them are pointing to the correct folders.

Open the junctions.txt file and whenever you see a junction or symbolic link (symlinkd) that is pointing to a non-existent drive, you can go to that directory at the command prompt and relink the junction.

For example, I have a junction in the C:\Users\Default directory that shows:

11/02/2006 07:02 AM <JUNCTION> Application Data [Y:\Users\Default\AppData\Roaming]

To fix this link I'll type:

c:\Users\Default>junction "Application Data" C:\Users\Default\AppData\Roaming

Note the quotes around the first argument since it has spaces in the name. The second argument doesn't have quotes because it has no spaces.

Now, if I type "dir /aL" in this folder, I'll see that this junction is now correct:

11/02/2006 07:02 AM <JUNCTION> Application Data [\??\C:\Users\Default\AppData\Roaming]

Well, I know the first part of the path looks weird ("[\??\C:\...]"), but it works. You can test out the link in windows explorer to ensure that it works. I don't know why the "\??\" shows up, but it works. If I find this is a problem I'll post a follow-up.

So if you want to repeat the above for every incorrect junction on your machine, you'll need to "cd" to the directory in question and repeat the junction command for each one.

I know some of the links show up as "symlinkd", but I didn't have any trouble deleting them and recreating them as junctions using the junction.exe tool. You can find more on Symmetric Links here. For my use, I don't really need symmetric links, so junctions will work fine. Your mileage may vary.

The only symlink I found on my system was at c:\users in the "All Users" link. I deleted and recreated it as a junction with junction.exe.

In the course of correcting my junctions, I found that I had a few areas where junctions were creating circular references. For example, if I looked at my junctions.txt file, I found that I'd have one entry that looked like this:

Directory of C:\Users\emrysx\AppData\Local\Application Data

And then the next one looked like this:

Directory of C:\Users\emrysx\AppData\Local\Application Data\Application Data

And then the next was this!

Directory of C:\Users\emrysx\AppData\Local\Application Data\Application Data\Application Data

Et cetera ad nauseam.

Now this may not be a problem due to the nature of junctions and links, but it bugged me and looked like a mess. Additionally, I couldn't see why these would be useful since I didn't have a link at the root pointing "C:\Documents and Settings\Application Data" to "C:\Users\emrysx\AppData\Roaming". Therefore it looked to me like I had messy junctions that were never going to be used.

So I deleted the "Application Data" junctions in C:\Users\emrysx\AppData\Local and C:\Users\Default\AppData\Local.

So far I haven't had any trouble with my applications or Vista as a result.