Rockstar!

Well I'm slowly working my way through GTA4. I've completed 67.81% of the game after 49 1/2 hours playing time, and I've only gone one more story mission left to complete. I haven't played much on multiplayer, but that's only down to limited time available (my global rank: 394,495!).

I got the first game update today, which was interesting. Doesn't sound like it'll affect me that much yet. I had a couple of multiplayer rounds last night with my mate Pete, and got an achievement (Let Sleeping Rockstars Lie). Looking into it today, it's: "Kill a Rockstar developer in a ranked multiplayer match." Pretty cool really :-)

Motherboard Issues and a Media-Streaming NAS

A couple of months back I upgraded the CPU in my home PC, from an Intel Dual Core 2.4GHz to a Core2 Quad 2.4 GHz (E6600). I didn't really need the upgrade, I rarely play PC games, but I thought it would make my Video Editing life a little quicker. An d it was cheap - only $300. My thinking was that I could pull the Dual Core CPU out and throw it into my brother's PC - giving us both an upgrade.

1st disappointment: The Dual Core CPU wouldn't work in my brother's motherboard (although it says supports dual core on the box, the fine-print on the website list that CPU as not supported). So I've been thinking about getting a cheap replacement MB for his PC, so I can make use of the CPU (currently sitting on my desk).

2nd disappointment: Ever since I installed the Quad Core CPU in my PC I get full hardware lockups intermittently. Sometimes repeatedly, straight after turning the PC on. Pain in the backside. So although my MB fully supports the CPU, there's got to be some compatibility issue (MB=Asus Striker Extreme).

I have upgraded my BIOS a few times to try and resolve the issue, with no great luck - when I spotted the 3rd problem: My RAID-1 config has been broken - probably as the result of a BIOS upgrade & loading setup defaults :-( I have 2x 500GB HDDs in a mirror, to protect my data - and now I have two separate HDs showing in Windows with different amounts of data on them. Grrr.

So I need to recreate the mirror - but the last time I did that I lost data, so I need a backup before proceeding. I don't have enough spare HDDs to backup the 450GB I have on these drives, so I've been shopping for a 1TB HDD, and a little NAS to put it in. There are some really cool NASs around these days, for very little money. I've been looking at:
* Linksys NAS200
* WD My Book World Edition (Dicky's got one)
* D-Link DNS-323

I was looking seriously at getting the NAS200 - due to it's cheap price, I like the Linksys brand, and the Media Streaming capability intrigued me. I like the idea of streaming movies etc straight to my Xbox 360 without having my PC switched on (using TVersity). But then after more reading website reviews etc. the D-Link box looks superior to the Linksys. Both in terms of performance and features. The D-Link has a 10/100/1000 interface and the Linksys only has a 10/100, but the internal CPU speed of the D-Link is better too. These results show how well the D-Link performs. There's a good Wiki about the DNS-323 here.

The best price I've found for the D-Link is at Ascent ($370) although no-one seems to have any in stock. And I've ordered a WD Caviar 1TB HDD, (for $318) which looks to have some good power saving features (might be helpful if I leave the NAS on 24x7).

So that'll solve my HDD issue. And hopefully provide a nice new media streaming system.

Now back to the motherboard issue. I've decided to buy a new MB for my PC - an Asus P5Q Pro, and move my Striker Extreme into my brother's computer. The main benefit of doing this for me will be the ability to run my Corsair Dominator 8500C5D RAM at 1066Mhz - where I can only run it at 800MHz in my current MB (has annoyed me all this time). Hopefully that'll give me a slight performance gain.

I gave up on the Striker Extreme following this weekend's hair-pulling antics after a BIOS upgrade gone wrong (Problem #4). In further troubleshooting my CPU hang issue I noticed that there was a (yet even) newer BIOS available from Asus - version 1504. I completed the upgrade using the EZflash function in the BIOS (from USB memory stick). It verified the BIOS upgrade OK, said it was restarting in 5seconds, then never came back.

The LCD Poster code was CODEINIT. Not a good sign. I tried all sorts of things to get past it, CMOS clear button, HW clock reset jumper everything. I was fully ready to remove it from the case and return to the supplier for an EEPROM replacement. And then I found a forum post mentioning something else I hadn't tried. Physically removing the CMOS battery from the MB - powering on for 10s - CMOS clear - powering off for 10s - replacing the battery - and powering back on.

It was back, working fine - but I still have the occasional lockup issue :-(

So it's new motherboard time. When the board and the HD arrive I'll backup my data and rebuild my machine. This time I'm going to install Windows Vista Ultimate 64bit SP1 - having finally obtained an SP1 slipstreamed install disk. I've waited almost 18 months to install Vista, following the hardware issues I had straight off I've run XP on it ever since, but with SP1 I figure it's about time to try again. And running 64bit should enable me to see the whole 4GB of RAM. Yay!

Slipstreaming XP SP3 - Issues with Windows Vista

Don't slipstream XP sp3 on Windows Vista! - Bink.nu
Doh! Just found this out the hard way: If you try and create a slipstreamed Windows XP Service Pack 3 image (i386 directory for an ISO) on Vista it all looks like it works great until the machine you want to install boots into Windows - it won't accept a valid product ID. What a waste of time :-(

Back to the start, extracting Sp3 from the .exe (-x), extracting an i386 directory from my bootable ISO, and doing a update.exe /slipstream:c:\temp - this time from another XP machine...

Silly really to think that two Microsoft products would work well together.

SP1 has landed - Finally!

I was pleasantly surprised the other day when I was finally offered Windows Vista SP1. The surprise was really down to the fact that I still hadn't met the prerequisites for drivers that SP1 was previously looking for. I got one of the two drivers I was missing a couple of weeks back - a new version of the Sigmatel Audio driver (from Microsoft).

But as I wrote a while back, Microsoft Support (KB948343) said I needed a new UPEK Fingerprint Reader driver - which wasn't available from my manufacturer (Toshiba). It had been suggested to me that I just install the latest driver from the UPEK website - they have v2.10 build 118 available, whereas I have v1.9.2.74 - the latest available through Toshiba.

But I wasn't really THAT keen. BSODing my primary laptop wasn't really a good option for me - so I was waiting for updated drivers to be available through the OEM (as MS said there were issues with drivers pre-v1.9.2.99).

So when Windows Update offered me SP1 I went looking. Had I Windows-Updated the UPEK driver without knowing? Nope. Nothing had changed. Going back to KB948343 to double check - and that entry has gone. It's no longer a troublesome driver apparently. What? How is that possible? Either SP1 + bad driver = BSOD or it doesn't, surely.

So I tried searching around for a while to see if anyone else had experienced any issues, but couldn't find anything (Theory: If it's not Googleable then it doesnt exist). I then decided to proceed with the Service Pack update - but only following a couple of hours of extra backups to both another PC and an external HDD.

I guess the only stand out thing with this Service Pack, from all the (seems like 1000s of) other ones I've done in the past is that it took AGES. It said allow 1 hour or something, but I'm sure it took 2. A really long time anyway. But when everything came back without a problem I was happy. And from the relatively short time I've been using it, I'm sure its working faster than before. My niggly Outlook 2007 freezing on startup problem has gone away too, which is great.

I'll continue to keep my eye on it for a while before officially declaring it a success, but I'm happy for the time being. Yay!