garan.org

I installed Vista on my main machine at home a couple of months ago, installing XP, Vista and Ubuntu, each on their own disk. Originally Vista was the RC2 release, a late beta that wasn't 100% stable, so last week I installed the Business edition that I've had kicking around for a couple of weeks. So far I've been fairly happy with it, not booting back into XP once since the install. There are a couple of funnies; HP don't have any 3-in-1 software for my printer/fax/scanner that will work under Vista (going to try and install the software on an XP VMware instance for those once in a blue moon times that I need it and failing that I'll borrow Jen's scanner!). The other funny is that Ultramon (multi-monitor app) has problems displaying wallpaper on screens to the right of the primary monitor. Wierd!!

Today I tried burning a CD for the first time. Under XP I always relied on Nero to burn my disks, never having had any success using the built in application. So I thought I'd try the built in functionality under Vista. Three failures later it's time to find out if Nero works under Vista!

I started having problems with my desktop PC last week. It was getting slow, sometimes hanging or rebooting itself with no apparant pattern. I tried a rebuild with both Windows XP and Ubuntu Linux and had problems with both. The CPU would go to 100% for no particular reason.

I tried re-seating cards and memory, pulling cards out to see if that helped but kept wondering about the hard drives. That particular part of the case was very warm to touch. So I've now removed the Raptor SATA drive that I was using as the Windows system disk and replaced it with a WD Caviar IDE drive. So far everything's looking a lot better.

At the moment the box is running Ubuntu AMD64 Linux. I managed to get both video cards working and all is looking well. But the AMD64 support is still in its infancy. So it's either get VmWare Workstation up and running with XP, rebuild the box on 32 bit Ubuntu which will improve matters but still need VmWare or just go back to running Windows (boo hiss!).

The crescendo of computer related noises in my office has once again reached the level at which I actually notice it so I've spent some time today tracking down the worst clicks and whirrs. First candidate was my desktop PC. I opened the side of the case and the first thing that I noticed was dust. I'm blaming the shredder. Ever since I put it in the office there's been a noticable increase in the amount of dust that's kicking around. Maybe I should move it somewhere else. Anyway. I digress.. I cleaned out the dust. Well that's not quite true. I re-organised the dust using a can of compressed air, taking particular care to make sure all the build up on the fans was cleared off. Normally I grab a Swiffer and use that but that would have meant going downstairs, something I'm not a huge fan of at the moment.

Still noisey so I started stopping fans with my finger to work out what was making the noise. The graphics card fan. Easy one to sort out with a quick visit to http://www.quietpc.com. So once that's sorted I should have a quiet desktop again.

Next it was time to dig out the server that lives hidden away behind the desk. At least one of the hard drives has been making a nasty clunking noise recently. A nose around inside and after pulling a couple of power leads I worked out that it was the root disk that was making all the noise. Typical; the only disk that requires me to rebuild the box. I've ordered some 250GB Samsung SpinPoint disks to replace all the drives in the box. They are probably the quietest disks you can buy which is what I'm looking for. Seek speeds and ultimate performance aren't really required in a file server.

So rebuilding the server allows me to try another flavour of Unix. I was going to go back to Debian after fiddling with Gentoo for a while. But friends have recommended Ubuntu. It's based on Debian with the same package management system behind it; the thing that I love abot Debian. The difference is that it's a lot more up to date with a release every 6 months, come rain or shine. I'll see how I go.

Back to the stairs remark earlier. I hurt my back on Saturday and have been struggling since. I'm booked in to see the Quack on Friday afternoon with a view to being referred to a local chiropractor called The Spine Team. I've heard a lot of good about them and after checking today that they are registered with BUPA, it's not going to break the bank to go and give it a go.

The annoying thing is that I was all rev'd up to start back at the gym on Monday morning. It's now Thursday and I still haven't been. It's making me more determined to come up with the final solution though.