Is it the software or the hardware?

Ah, that Dell Inspiron 1721 that I moved over to WinXP Pro x64 had a hard drive problem: the 'access of forever' problem where it spent hours thrashing on the poor drive and did nothing. At that point it was obvious that it would never stop and so the time was to admit that there was something wrong with it. Pull plug, pull batteries and let the poor thing rest a minute or two and then power-up.

"Disk Read Error Has Occurred" and the three finger salute to restart as the OS just doesn't show up.

The fun I have not had!

Thus I have been through the world of looking at hard drive recovery tools as this same drive has now gone belly up across two operating systems with the same problem. It *is* the hardware, just reliable enough to make you think its ok, and just unreliable enough not to be trusted. And this strange world is populated by high price, guaranteed data recovery services and the 'freebie' end where a bit of elbow grease just might get you somewhere. Maybe.

Normally I would go mid-tier with a relatively cheap set of tools, but free and time is always enticing. One thing I did note, is that Windows will not actually recognize the disks from the install CD... neither XP nor Vista. But, that is not the end of the OS spectrum, and when looking at diagnostics I hit upon the folks at Ultimate Boot CD which is a look at how to make a LiveCD with all sorts of neat recovery tools on it... and their follow up at UBCD4Win on the howtos of doing this, which is often less than obvious. The problem is, of course, that Win isn't seeing the drives. From there it was a check out of Knoppix, which has many neat distros including the one from INSERT which has a nice load of disk and forensics tools that can fit on a mini-CD, just in case you are the kind of person who needs that sort of thing on short notice. Linux has come a long way! And as soon as the folks at NTFS-3G get an equivalent chkdsk routine to run natively, things will be nice.

On the Win side there are many promises that a new, cheap environment that MS distributes for free to OEMs, Windows PE or Pre-install Environment will actually allow nearly anything to run on it... from the Windows Automated Installation Kit (AIK) which is Win PE built on Vista. It is, as they say, a fascinating area where a number of developers are now flipping this around and saying: 'Since MS doesn't want to make that more widely available and since so many of us have install disks, why not make a WinPE via the install disks?' Which is a damned good question, actually, if you want to have a very portable version of Windows that boots up from CD or from USB drives. Most of the installs are aimed at the low end of things: under 200 MB and many under 100 MB and a few aimed at 20-30MB.

For a full Windows install.

They are centralizing at winbuilder.net and are getting a set of automated scripts to lowball a lot of tools and capability into as little space as possible for portable Windows environments. Like the Asus Eee... luckily I don't have one of those, but at the rate I'm going... Most of the projects are over at boot-land.net your place for all sorts of fun OS projects beyond Windows and Linux.

From all of this I find yet more neat tools that I never knew existed, like MagicISO Virtual CD/DVD and its ability to mount an ISO image normally used to burn a CD as a virtual drive. Neat! Especially with the MS WinPE download, mount it and *boom*, insty-drive. Also a previously known favorite imgburn which is a down and dirty CD/DVD burner, with all sorts of goodies packed into it... found that with DVD Flick awhile ago for taking that video you found and burning it to CD or DVD. The folks at the Ultimate Boot CD have more free tools than you can reasonably want for everything you can imagine. Chock-a-block full of them. And a nice nod to DiskInternals with a suite of free and pay-for software for addressing hard drive issues.

So what I am slowly narrowing this down to is a Linux LiveCD distro that can handle WinXP Pro x64 in a Virtual Machine, on CD, and run the chkdsk from that. Or otherwise pull off that stunt.

Next path forward is to try and 'finesse it' with one of the WinBuilder groups, of which the one run by thuun looks the most interesting, although there are a couple of others to try out.

After that (assuming it doesn't work) is the other thing to do: hardware.

That path leads to a 2.5" SATA notebook drive enclosure for USB hook-up to my main system and then hitting *that* with disk diagnostic tools. Might work, too! As it is there is something broken where the files are not recognizable by the the Security Knoppix disk running the NTFS-3G system, so copying the files looks like a non-starter. Would have done that first and just reformat the things while looking for replacement (not refurbished, ie. used, drives). Software first, then hardware.

There is always Dell, but I have come to find them untrustworthy. YMMV.

Customer service follies

Ah, Dell!

The deal is that the reason, and sole reason I buy from Dell, ever, is integrated hardware.  My first Dell Dimension XPS desktop back in... when did that line start... 1996?  1995?... somewhere in there... well, I bought Dell for the integration factor, not for the lovely excess software.  And in no time at all I was quickly stripping things out, doing the DIY bit on system creation and after that left Dell behind for long years.  But when it comes to laptops/notebooks, you are getting out of the easy DIY territory.  Thus, after that initial, one-time buy, I decided to give Dell a try out...

Here is how I approached it:

Hardware - Could I get a decent deal if I stripped all the software off and started with a clean install (and yes that is difficult to do with Dell, but not impossible).

That was it, my only deciding factor was hardware integration.  Dell does that fairly well.

Thus my first Inspiron 1721 suddenly going non-bootable due to a driver update via Win Vista was disconcerting.  The second time I advanced my software replacement schedule by a number of months.  I found all the basic WinXP x64 drivers, did the nLite tango and soon had a *useful* and *stable* notebook computer.  With an OS I can stand, once I take the hedge-trimmers to it.  That system replaced my truly ancient Desknote that was slowly running out of disk space and was finding some software that had everyday use that was choking it.  Software bloat killed it, in other words.  Still trying to figure out what it can be used for, and will hang on to it for awhile yet, as it still has emergency, 'if you have nothing else left', utility to it.

Looking at the home computing situation to replace the absolutely ancient system I had thrown together for my lady way back in... 2002?  2003?... around then, based on an Asus board if memory serves... it is going through hardware death of its drives.  The floppy kicked the bucket a year or so ago and the CD just announced 'I have gone to meet my maker... which is Samsung', I started to realize I was heading into the long-term MTBF of the hard drives.  The boot drive dates back to 1999 or so, and while it still works the overall cruft is starting to get to Win2K.

At that point I was looking at two options.

First - The SuperMicro SC750-A  case is still one of the best cases I have run across, and it housed that system and my non-functioning back-up which had suffered the cosmic-ray death of one of the paired memory sticks.... until I swapped pairs and realized it was the motherboard that had suffered that death.  So I have *two* of the heaviest, roomiest cases sitting here and almost no energy to do any DIY stuff.  I could try to do it with a couple of reputable suppliers from my old days that are still going, and do the down and dirty of 'they test and I install' deal.  Possible, but that would eat my time and energy for anything else.

Second - Shift strategy, go light and modern, junk the cases and, possibly, the old CRT monitors, and do the 'notebook as desktop' deal for my lady and have a reputable screwdriver shop do me a custom back-up.

Astonishingly, the costs were the same.  Moore's Law and all that.

So a same day order: one to Dell for a second Inspiron 1721 and one to my reputable dealer from days gone by for a nice downsized system.

Amazingly, since the Inspiron was pre-made sitting in a warehouse, they arrived within a day of each other.

Thus the Inspiron, by arriving first, got the going over while I did the background software installs on the other system.  And, when it came time to update the firmware in the DVD drive of the Inspiron... Lo!  the drive doth not work as advertised. 

The courageous hero puts off contacting Dell trying to find *any* solution beyond that. 

The only thing worse than the catacombs of the MotherShip Knowledge Base is Dell Tech Support.

So on the screwdriver shop deal, I swapped out the cheapie DVD to allow them to install the OS there, and swapped in a real one pre-bought elsewhere.  Also a wireless network card.  The system runs *perfectly* as ordered.  Good work!

That shop is MWave and I have been dealing with them, off and on for various things, for some years now.  You just choose all the components, throw in the full construct, set-up, test, update for $45 and in a few days you have a well constructed system to your specs.  I went with the maker of my main system case, SilverStone Tek and their cute Evolution case.  Since my last construction for my main system was from MSI, I went with them and their K9AGM3-FIH board.  Went with a retail AMD processor but had the folks at MWave take off the mediocre heatsink/fan of retail box deals and had them put on a decent heatsink/fan combo which they recommended a better one from Thermaltake instead of the Zalman one I had chosen.

That left me, however, with contacting Dell Tech Support which I did through online chat at Dell.  And I was given the webpage to actually unseat and reseat the drive and that should do it!  They would phone me back in an hour....

Riiiight....

A day later, after trying 6 times to actually get the DVD drive to *budge* and *no* phone call, I got a bit peeved.

Today, nearly two days later, I was sending lovely messages to Tech and Customer Support.

A couple of hours later and, yes, a phone call from Dell which the nice Tech Support person had me describe the situation, which I had done on each and every message sent to them from two days ago, and finally did the DirectConnect ch-cha to let the remote Dell Tech Support person see that things were as I said they were.  And then promptly forgot that sending me a replacement drive when the current one was stuck in the system was a non-starter.  That took 3-4 times of repeating to finally get the message through.

Drive does not come out to be reseated.  Drive stuck.  Cannot replace drive with everything I have hear unless I start popping the case open and having fun with things.  Drive is fragile and did not want to bend or break it while it sat stuck in the system.

Stuff like that.

That finally got through and a nice little ship-back box will arrive in a couple of days to let it be shipped back.  Take out the power adapter, battery and hard drive because those things head towards sticky-finger land at the factory.

Thank you, to MWave!

And once Dell delivers a *working* system, and I thoroughly check it all out, then Win Vista takes a hike and I put a reliable OS on the thing.

 

Moral of the story: buy from Dell for hardware and make sure it works.

Find someone trustworthy for making *real* systems if you don't need hand-holding on every little thing that can go wrong on a computer.

 

I was thinking of putting an ITX system together... but that will await time and energy for a *small* build.

Computers and the time they eat

Ah, the loveliness of computers!  They do everything you tell them even when it isn't what you want them to do... just open those pod bay doors, HAL...

Today's entry is brought to you courtesy of the Dell Inspiron 1721, which I got on the refurb site at Dell.  Basically a mid-line computer for basic tasks, nice screen and integrated graphics.  I should have known better!  The lovely thing about Dell products is that they tinker with them so that, in theory, recovery from problems should be easy but, in actual fact, they aren't.  In this case, by doing something fun with the hard drive controller integrated in with the main motherboard, when you update using the stock AMD/ATI drivers, something happens to the hardware recognition of the SATA drives throwing them offline.  So when you re-boot, you can't boot as the poor little drives are all tuckered out and sitting on the sidelines.

So, go to update the Catalyst Control Center, take the basic install and *poof*.

Needless to say as the system rebooted the drives are 'offline' and there is no joy in Mudville.

The last time this happened (yes, I repeated the mistake!  'operator error'!) it took 3+ hours with Dell tech support and left me exhausted for two days.  So, instead of that, I decided to see if I could make things worse by DIY.  Always a danger with these highly integrated systems gone off due to a minor problem... still... it would be a 'learning experience' for awhile.

Now, after some fiddling I was, finally, able to get the poor little controller on-board to unrecognize and re-recognize the hard drives.  Which, as things happen, made it worse, not better... although I did find that Dell had put a teensy copy of good old DOS (Disk Operating System!  HIMEM and everything) so that it would run from RAM.  Yes, my very first PC you can fit on a ROM and load over to RAM.  Amazing, that.  Tempting, too.  But skipping temptation, as the drives were 'ONLINE' I should be able to whisk up the 'restore disk' and get things going again.  Right?

No.

Never *that* easy.

I did, way back when, leave an e-mail to Dell and they did get back to me and I will have to peruse their view on the original problem.  As it stands my longer-range goal of installing an OS that I know (Win XP x64) advanced up a coupe of notches.  I am fed up with Vista (great for games, as my niece will attest to, but the most butt-ugly OS that the MotherShip has come out with since... WinME... Win95... DOS 6.0... ok, MS has a few of the butt-ugly OS's behind it, so to speak.  I still *like* NT 4.0, and it being done right as Win2K, and finally stomping the extras out to get XP x64 working well.  And as I've worked with two versions of DOS, two versions DOS/Win, 95, 98, NT 4.0, 2K, XP x64, and now Vista (x32 and x64), so batting .250.  Good enough for the big leagues, but not terrific.

The last two days I have been looking at creating brand-new install disks for XP x64, and WinV x32.  This is most entertaining and fun, if you don't mind huge downloads in the background while you do other things.  This can be done with two of the following tools, made by the same folks:

nLite for Win2K, XP, Server 2003

vLite for Win Vista

If you have the 'recovery' disk or original install disk, plus updated drivers from various manufacturers for your target machine, plus any other goodies that need integration (like Service Packs) the n/vLite tools are perfect!  They will take those disk copies, add in the drivers and Service Packs and then burn a new install disk with all that fun stuff included.  For some of the drivers you may need Universal Extractor that works on all the .msi, .cab and other formats used to carry drivers around in.  Works like a charm.

So now I have dual install disks ready (Vista and XP x64) and will be hitting the thing *again*, possibly looking at what I should have done to start with... which was not to buy Dell.  Beyond that, if I can get it to boot to the old install, that would be fine.  If not... well... original install disks are very, very handy to have.  And a spare license for XP x64.

Beyond that my Lady is back from surgery and some time eaten up in doing things around here that she can't get done.  One of my cats has an enlarged heart (didn't show up on a X-ray 4 or so years ago, so it is recent and genetic), and now with lots of meds in yummy banana flavor, liquid form.  The other cat is doing fine.

Strangely enough, as I did a lot of writing in the kitchen with the notebook computer from Dell, my productivity has become stone-like.

Also, I'm exhausted.

Update whenever things head a bit more towards normal range.