After weeks of pain, dealing with the fact that my mouse (external, trackpad or pointer) stopped working in Word 2007 and Outlook 2007 after a random amount of time after launching, and having have tried a myriad of “solutions”, I finally came across the relevant and final solution to the problem.

While performing my research into this issue, it struck me as interesting and odd that a great number of posts made mention of the hardware where this issue occurred and it was consistently a Lenovo Laptop.  Different models, but all Lenovo.  Guess what my hardware make is where these sweet problems where occurring?  Yeah, my new Lenovo W500.

If you own a Lenovo laptop running Windows 7 (any version, any platform), the problem is most likely NOT one of the common ones you may have already run across, that include:

• Delete the “Data” key from the registry key
• Reinstall Office/Change the Key
• Disable add-ons
• Launch the app by going the “Run as Administrator” route.

I tried all of the above, mostly in haste after running quick searches and implementing “quick fixes” in what I perceived to be the right way to approach the problem/solution given my limited amount of available time during my very busy and hectic schedule… wrong… I should have dug deeper, I should have persisted and I would have found the solution that ended being the relevant one that applied to my situation.

The real culprit: Lenovo’s Password Manager Utility.

Solutions:

Drastic: Remove, Uninstall, Wipe, Annihilate.
Less Drastic:

1. Open the “Password Vault” utility.  Either search for it, or click on the appropriate shortcut if available.
2. Click “Set Preferences”
3. Under “General” tab, uncheck “Enable Hot Keys”
4. Click “Ok”
5. Close
6. Reboot

That is the summary, for all the thread’s details and other noise, if you feel like it, go to the Microsoft Communities post itself.

I just got done with running the upgrade to Windows 7 Ultimate x64 on my previous Vista Ultimate x64 system. 

Kudos, two thumbs up, hooray and well done!

Painless, quick, efficient, transparent.  System is performing like a charm.  The only one visible change was that it swapped my wallpaper.

After having pre ordered it from Amazon (sorry, no links… not making it easier for anyone to give ASUS business they don’t deserve) and paying a hefty $375 for it (in comparison to the competition), the unit shipped on February 7th of this year 2009 and I received it a few days later.

I was motivated to pre order, because as I had read somewhere in the “interwebs”, that the ASUS 1000HE was the first one to offer the (back then) new Atom N280 processor.  Sparing anyone the details of what the benefits of the N280 processor are over its brother the N270 processor (yes, to me processors are MALE because they do all the hard work and the heavy lifting, plus they can multitask!), but suffice it to say it was not because of the clock speed difference: 1.60ghz for the N270 in contrast to the whopping 1.66ghz of its big brother the N280.

3 months after, the unit’s integrated wireless card sadly died.  I called, got on their phone with their tech support, explained my case and after running a series of unnecessary tests to satisfy their need to prove the customer is not an idiot, it was determined (you don’t say?) that the wireless card was indeed kaput! As if I didn’t know already, but oh well… the RMA was issued and the unit went out the door and unto little machine hospital care. 

Little did I know, “little machine hospital” care turned out to be the worst HMO anyone would ever want to put their selves into their hands.

About a month later I received the unit back, and promptly turned it back on making my first order of business to test that the wireless card was indeed in working order.  Oh jolly, yeay! it was.

Don’t ask me why, I can’t tell you, and maybe its part of my stupid OCD habits, but I decided to check on the hardware specs by “right clicking” on my computer and selecting properties (you know these .  Oh, I remember, I wanted to confirm it had 1GB of memory and not 2GB, because my ultimate plan was (and quite honestly probably still is) to install Windows 7 on it.  I wanted to set out to buy extra RAM for it.

This is what I saw:

Surprise and darn! WTF??? 1.6Ghz Atom N270… not Atom N280… hmm… am I going crazy?  So I go and check Amazon’s receipts and sure enough, It says right there I bought a unit with an N280 processor. 

I then went and check the box in which the unit originally shipped, the same one I used to ship it back to repair the wireless card (yes, I keep that sort of stuff laying around.  I told you I have annoying OCD habits).

Sure enough, you can see the serial number AND that it is an EEEPC 1000HE, even the color is listed so thank God they didn’t send me back a pink one! can you imagine the post I’d write? 

There it is: INTEL ATOM280.

I quickly call them up, state the case and … surprise #2: with what sounded to me at the time, a very condescending forcibly polite little tone of voice, the tech proceeds to tell me that “it is all ok, because right here in my system it says that the serial number for your machine indicates the unit shipped from factory with a N270 processor”  I literally felt my head flush with the fluids of irrational anger and almost had to run and put it under the bathroom sink faucet to cool it off.   10 minutes later, after futile attempts to use logic to explain that “it must be an error”, I concluded with the statement “I don’t give a fuck what your system says, my unit was purchased as, was shipped from Amazon as, and I used it for 2 months as configured with an N280 processor” and followed it up with “what do I need to do to prove to you guys you are verging on committing retail fraud or at the very least deception by assumption of stupidity?”. 

Long story short (yeah right, but believe me when I say this is the abridged version) I had to write an essay about 5 times lengthier and angrier than this post is turning to be, and included every picture possible to prove to those idiots that I am not an idiot and that indeed my EeePC was originally equipped with an N280 and they shipped it back after repair with a lesser processor, the N270.

Blah, blah, blah, yada-yada-yada… about 2 weeks later I finally got a new RMA, and after my strong position that I wasn’t going to pay for shipping so that they can correct their blatant mistake, they included a pre-paid shipping label.  So I shipped it out and readied myself to let the waiting begin.

Yesterday after approximately 3 or 4 weeks, I received my EeePc 1000HE back from ASUS technical service (well technically speaking, I picked it up).  

Got it home, power it up and of course the first thing I do is go into the BIOS to check the processor… surprise, surprise, or should I be surprised?  You guessed it… same shit.  N270 Processor… this is even AFTER their order slip reads and says they actually replaced it AGAIN with the N280 (see the picture of the body of the repair slip included in the box back from the repair center):

Breath in Guillermo, Breath in… on the phone again, calmly explain the situation to the rep on the other side and guess what line they tried to feed me yet once again? “sir, the serial number for your machine shows that…” I said “STOP… STOP it right there and get me the highest ranking someone that I can talk to right now that is not going to insult my intelligence”.  She did, and I got Irish on the line, and she listened and did not try the “the serial number says” line again on me, although in all fairness i did warn her about it.

I am still waiting for yet another RMA, yet another pre paid shipping label and will send it out again.  This unit has spend more time in transit and in repair than it has on my lap and in my house.  I am not hopeful, but I have no recourse so I’ll try to make myself a believer.

Maybe I am not helping my case, but I felt compelled to and so I did… and wrote a note to the poor soul who is fortunate enough to be dealt the card of opening this box when it comes into ASUS’s technical black hole.

Here it is in all its glory.  Tell me what you think.

Fresh off the production line, a P2V tool by Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell, formerly of Sysinternals.

The tool is called Disk2Vhd and this is the 1.0 offering, and is now part of the Sysinternals Suite.

Disk2vhd is a utility that creates VHD (Virtual Hard Disk - Microsoft’s Virtual Machine disk format) versions of physical disks for use in Microsoft Virtual PC or Microsoft Hyper-V virtual machines (VMs). The difference between Disk2vhd and other physical-to-virtual tools is that you can run Disk2vhd on a system that’s online.

This assumes “other” tools require you to power down the system you wish to create an image of.  I guess this sounds reasonable to expect, and since I haven’t used either tool yet, I am not one to make a judgment call.

I am turning my old Dell 600SC server into a virtual host exclusively and in doing so I need to P2V it and store that image on my new NAS and then host it virtually amongst other environments I plan to add.  These tools are now a critical component of that plan and my plan is to write a post about the process and results once I get to doing it.

I needed a virtual machine to test an application in isolation and realized I didn’t have any of my .vhd images on hand.  

I looked around and came across this collection of downloadable VHDs directly from Microsoft, pre-activated, for both Vista and XP with different versions of IE including IE6 (XP only), IE7 & IE8.

The OSes are trial versions (of course) and expire January 1st for the XP installs and 120 days after first use for the Vista images.

Images require at least 1.5GB of HD space once expanded, so make sure you have some room available for it.

Got myself a new toy, a Linksys NAS 200, picked it up at on sale at buy.com for $75 and stuffed it with dual 1TB Hitachi 7200RPM hard drives from Newegg.com for $65 a piece after $10 immediate coupon and, where I to get my ass in gear I have a $10 rebate on each that would bring the price down to $55 a pop.

Here is my cliff notes review.

Installation

Physical

A snap, quite literally (do notice I did have a helper throughout so take that into account!).

Take the front covers out by releasing the plastic latch, then squeeze in the 3.5” SATA drives which fit snuggly and perfectly, until you feel the connectors in the back perfectly couple with the drive’s own.

Power up…

Setup

Pop in the Installation CD, which runs the app that scans for the device in your local network.  Either follow the wizard (which I did the first time) or change settings manually (without the wizard).  Settings to set include device network name, IP (static or DHPC) and drive configuration.

The NAS supports as much as you would expect from a $75, 2 drive device.  RAID 0 (stripping) for speed, RAID 1 (mirroring) for peace of mind.  You can also configure it to use the Two separate disks (Recommended)or Two disks configured as one large disk (JBOD/LVM).

I configured it using RAID 1, since I don’t think I have close to that amount of data requiring “secure” storage.  This is the purpose that best fits my immediate needs and that in my mind justified the roughly $150 expense.

One small shortcoming that I think is, again typical to expect of your $75 device, is that you are tied to manage permissions and setup shares and such from the proprietary software interface, something that may fall short of a great experience but also something that I am probably going to do seldom if ever now that it is up and running. 

It is manageable via its self contained and hosted web interface or via a desktop app included with the supporting media.

If you happen to need additional storage to be served via the same mechanism and want to add to the NAS, one option is to do it via it’s USB interface.  The device will manage up to 2 external USB drives and serve them up via the same interface with some limitations, served straight up no RAID.

Some cool, non advertised features include power management (very welcome indeed) and a “Media Server” option which I haven’t tried out yet.

Thus far, not quite 1 month into the purchase, installation, setup and configuration, I would recommend this product to anyone looking for a truly inexpensive way to store and manage (secure if so desired) data.  How expensive or cheap you end up going depends on your options for the actual drives you put in it, but you could start with one and add to it.  Of course that would limit or somewhat restrict your ability to use mirror after the fact.

I know its not the biggest, or most powerful or most impressive out there, but MY jaw certainly dropped when I first got my hands on this bad boy.

This is our new Database Server.  Check out the # of processors, and if you are still standing, check out the amount of RAM installed!  I am running at least 2 machines that have a smaller hard drive than the total amount of RAM on this monster.

Yeah, it rocks!