Zman's Diary : quad core

Windows Live Everything All In One Installer (unless you are on x64 of course)

zman — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 17:48:00 GMT

Today I needed to install Live Writer on my nice new x64 machine so that I can finally upload another Coding4Fun article (Yes I know its been far too long....) so I headed off to the download site and ran the new installer. "Windows live programs can't be installed on this Operating System"...

I'm getting a little annoyed about apps that don't run on x64... heck x86 apps will run just fine on it so unless you have some reason to be fiddling with very low level stuff then it should just work. I'm not the only one who is annoyed. I guess someone has determined that not enough people have x64 machines. Come on Microsoft if you can't do it properly then neither will anyone else.

After a bit of googling I did find a solution on LiveSide.net - though this requires you have an x86 machine to run the installer on to get hold of the .msi file. It seems that while all the Live applications run and install on x64 the new combined installer doesn't. Yes indeed the whole shebang is broken because the initial installer didn't to the right thing.

Of course combining all the windows clutter into a single installer means that Microsoft are right up there with all these companies that bundle "crap I don't need" and try to trick me into installing it. Again I'm sure some marketing genius has a pay raise built on 'getting XX% of people to install product YYYYY' and they don't care that none of those people us it or even know they installed it.

But back to LiveWriter... i switched over to my x86 laptop and ran the installer - from the website (that's important) and once it ran it said "It looks like you are offline" and refused to go any further. Well IE thinks I'm online, Live Messenger thinks I'm online, ping thinks I'm online... the only thing I can think is that my laptop is wireless. Looks like this new installer needs a little work guys.

Eventually I fired up the old trusty dell that I retired last month and ran the install there. Copied the MSI over to the x64 box and crossed every part of my body that was crossable. But it still wasn't enough. "Windows live writer requires the installation of the .Net framework". Now what people??? I'm on Vista - it comes with .Net 2.0/3.0 do I really need 1.1 too? So I do an install of .Net 1.1, plus the service pack, plus several windows update fixes. Now the installer runs - but it doesn't complete. It just ends while it is "gathering requirements". So I guess it really doesn't work on x64. This machine is about as clean as you can get - 95% of the software on there is Microsoft core stuff like Office and Visual Studio.

I give up... but wait there is hope... the light at the end of the tunnel from some Live Writer forums where they discuss the workaround that I am using. Apparantly if you run the installer this way you get no prompts but it does actually install. Sure enough there is it in the start menu. Ok thats just most of the morning down the toilet... who do I send the invoice to?

Now blogging 4 times as fast...

zman — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 00:45:00 GMT

Well after this mornings exciting conclusion to the 'How many ways can I screw up building a PC' I have done the essential installs - Visual Studio 2005, C# Express, Visual Studio 2005 SP1, C# Express SP1, Visual Studio Vista patch, C# express Vista patch, Visual Studio 2005 Washington State bug fix, C# Express Thursday afternoon update, etc etc... Though I hate to link to Jeff twice in one week and give him the power of my google juice (yes folks that was sarcasm) I have to agree with him that this is just a big old mess.

So I have a wonderfully clean PC now with just the developer essentials - seems a shame to start installing all the crapware on there. I already had to install foxit reader (though that is preferable to the alternative) and of course google toolbar since Microsoft still don't think I need a spell checker in my browser.

The new PC feels amazingly snappy... there's none of the subtle delays switching tabs in IE (Scott saw this too - you've got to wonder what happens in the IE tab switching code as its easily one of the slowest things on my old PC) and scrolling long and complex web pages is just nice and smooth unpacking and compiling the spacewar project from XNA GSE was also noticeably faster. Sadly the internet hasn't speeded up any while I was under the desk re-cabling and vacuuming up 18 month old hairs and dust.

So now I just have to transfer my years of documents and stuff from the old PC and install Office and I will be almost back to productive.. man maybe it would have been cheaper to pay Jeff to do all of this for me ;-)

4Gb and Vista installs slower....

zman — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 04:23:00 GMT

I was a little underwhelmed by the installing vista from a USB memory stick. It really doesn't seem that much faster. However while surfing around to various people who commented on Jeff's PC building series I came across someone having problems with 4Gb installed. Thankfully I was not having that problems but I noticed Jeff had replied saying that the vista install went very slowly wiht 4Gb - so I followed his advice and removed 2Gb temporarily. Things seemed to have picked up a bit though the 'copying files' stage still seems to be VERY slow considering I have a fast USB stick and a 10k SATA drive receiving. Oh well I guess it will get there eventually - I've already restarted this too many times.

Vista Installer team I don't like you much at the moment.....

zman — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 02:34:00 GMT

I like Vista. I was running the beta as soon as it would install on my machine and I've suffered through the quirks of missing drivers and defending the OS while being called a Microsoft shill by some. But I'm waisting time now because when the installer has an error its restarting instead of letting me go back and change options.

Since I thought I may do several installs and since I don't have a spare SATA cable I put the Vista files onto a nice fast 4Kb USB key and booted from that - all seems quite straightforward and it is supposed to be much faster.

Let it boot into the installer... wait
Enter the language settings
Click the 'install now' button... wait
Type in the product key... wait
Accept the license agreement
Click 'Custom' since this is a new installation.
The 'drive chooser' window shows up. I have 2 brand new drives and it lets me choose between them. I pick my fast expensive 10k raptor and hit Next and windows says 'Windows could not determine if this computer contains a valid system volume'. Press OK and the installer goes back to step 2... Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarghhhhhh. Whats wrong with just sending me back to step 6 so I can fix the problem with the drive.
After trying a couple of times I assume that the drive need to be partitioned and formatted. There's no way to do that so I press the 'advanced' buttons and get several new buttons but still nothing about partitioning. There is a 'New' button with an icon that looks like a star (yes great icon guys) so I click that and sure enough it makes a new partition...
Select the new partition and Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargggggggggggggg - I get the same damn error and back to step 2
Do some searches on the web. Hmmm this is old but I seem to remember playing with the boot priority and moving the USB drive to the top of the list.... so restart, fix the bios and go back to #1
Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

So on reflection maybe the real problem here is that the error message just isn't very helpful. The list of drives I'm presented with doesn't include the USB key I booted from so I have no idea that its a problem due to that.

Or maybe the real problem here is that I shouldn't go fiddling with BIOS settings :-)

Jeff Atwood has tiny hands :-)

zman — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 23:07:00 GMT

The last couple of computers I bought have been fairly high spec Dell machines and since its been 3 years since my last desktop purchase I decided it was time to upgrade from the P4 that has served me very well.

I looked at Dell again but this time I just wasn't happy with the specs - it seems that to get a decent dev rig with DX10 cards I had to start stepping up into the crazy gamer alienware type PC and those get crazy pretty quick. I resigned myself to months of research and building my own. But then Jeff over at CodingHorror was 'commissioned' by Scott Hanselman to build him a developer computer. So I saved myself lots of work and just copied him!

The final parts arrived today so I've spent this morning putting it together. Things are a bit more complicated than 8 years ago the last time I did this - CPUs seem smaller but the heat sinks are much bigger. There was no SATA last time I built and this is the 1st time I've put in a power supply with its octopus bunch of mystery cables. The graphics cards are much bigger too and have their own personal fans attached.

Other than going with 1 card (since I only have 2 monitors at the moment and have no need for SLI) I just bought the stuff on Jeff's list however there's been a few teething troubles.

Jeff's list doesn't quite match what he built for Scott - he changed the motherboard to a different make and I didn't notice. Sadly according to the box this board doesn't support quad core over clocking which is a bit sad since I paid for the faster memory chips just to enable that. Hopefully a bios upgrade or something will fix this
The second power connector on the motherboard is in one of the most hard to reach places I have ever seen. It took several long tools to get that in there and the fins on the CPU cooler are sharper than they look
The motherboard only comes with a 'quick install' manual - you have to go online to find the actual manual with the schematic to find what all the bits are
The online schematic nor the manual doesn't tell you where the 1394 header is - thankfully this article on HardOCP does.
The online schematic doesn't tell you where the sound header is for the front panel - thankfully if you actually read the manual it tells you.
The motherboard only comes with 2 SATA cables and 2 SATA power connectors... somehow I managed to get the SATA DVD drive so I need to go and buy a cable even though my house is full of cables I kept 'just in case'
Hmmm do I connect my 2 SATA drives to different SATA controllers?? Is it like IDE in that respect - nope the manual doesn't tell you that. Seems like Jeff put his on #1 and #2 so thats good enugh for me.
When Jeff suggests putting the hard drives in the bottom enclosure DO AS HE SAYS... the middle enclosure is no use at all when you have the big ass graphics card there because you just can't fit a drive in it!
The fan on the CPU cooler doesn't actually fit in the motherboard - the memory gets in the way on the right hand side and the chipset cooler on the bottom. The top and left side already have case fans within an inch and the cooler claims its fine with passive cooling so for now I will just let it go and see what happens as I test it and overclock it. I have to say when I opened the box and looked at this beast of a cooler I just about died. It has to be one of the meanest looking things I ever paid $40 for.
My hands are fricking HUGE. Jeff must have the tiny hands of a 5 year old to be able to reach in and build this thing fast :-)

After about 3-4 hours of reading, surfing and trying to plug in connectors in the dark I have a booting PC... well as far as the BIOS anyway. Then it took me another hour to make the hard drives work (must have had a loose connection on the power - after i unplugged and replugged everything they worked just fine).

So now on with the software build up.... I see Scott has already got his list of things to install though he is shaming me with he 3 monitor setup and his attempt at tidy cabling (maybe next time I will post pictures of my half assed attempt solving at the cabling problem under my desk).