Primist

Dell Vostro 1500 reboot and partition resizing issues

Posted by Ali Sanaei under Computer Hardware, Computer Software

My work got me a brand new laptop last week, Dell Vostro 1500. I decided to do a clean Windows Vista Ultimate installation as I find the applications installed on the built-in Windows pretty screwing the OS’ stability.

This time there was a lot of headache to set up these Vostro laptops with a clean Windows Vista installation (Dell’s fault). The main issues were:

1- Not being able to resize the partitions using Vista’s built-in tool and also Paragon Partion Magic software.
2- Getting a nasty blue-screen error, STOP: 0×0000007B (0×80403BA0, 0×00000034, 0×00000000, 0×00000000), when trying to do a warm restart on the machines, just before windows wants to load.

I’m putting the solution here in case other have faced the same problem. Here are the required steps to install a fresh OS on these systems (These 30 simple steps just look simple here, but took 5 days to be found by me at nSynergy, Dell and Microsoft!):

1- Turn on the laptop and keep pressing F2 to enter the Mainboard’s setup.
2- Select onboard devices.
3- Select “Flash Cache Module” and then select “Off”.
4- Select “SATA Operation” and then select “ATA”.
5- Press Esc and select “Save/Exit”.
6- Insert Dell’s Drivers and Utility DVD and boot up from it.
7- Select “Q” to quit the initial menu.
8- Type “debug” to enter to HDD debugging environment.
9- Type the following command lines:

F 200 L1000 0
A CS:100
xxxx:0100 MOV AX,301
xxxx:0103 MOV BX,200
xxxx:0106 MOV CX,1
xxxx:0109 MOV DX,80

xxx:010C INT 13
xxxx:010E INT 20
xxxx:0110
g
q

10- Restart computer.
11- Insert Dell MediaDirect DVD and boot up from it.
12- Select option 2 to resize the partitions.
13- Enter C partition’s size. 70GB is recommended for these 250GB Hard Drives.
14- Select “Y” to confirm.
15- Press any key to strike.
16- Restart computer.
17- Insert Windows Vista DVD and boot up from it.
18- Enter the license key, read the terms and conditions and if agree go to next step.
19- Press advanced on the next window.
20- Format Partition D which about 160GB should be shown if 70Gb has been chosen for Partition C.
21- Format Partition C which about 68GB should be shown.
22- Click next to install Windows on the partition C.
23- After Windows installation completion, insert the MediaDirect DVD again to finalise its installation.

If there is an image to be restored/recovered, after the above steps, do as follows:

24- Restart computer.
25- Insert Norton Ghost DVD and boot up from it.
26- Read the terms and conditions and if agree, go to next step.
27- A Windows Vista environment will come up. Select “Recover My Computer” Option.
28- Select the image or VM to be recovered.
29- After restoring the machine, reboot.
30- Enjoy!

Note that the warm restart blue screen issue might get solved by only doing the first five steps.

“Microsoft Surface” hits the running ground

Posted by Ali Sanaei under Computer Hardware, Science and Technology

Microsoft just announced a very cool new multi-touch computing product, called Surface. At first the rumors were this would be an iPhone competitor, but it’s clear now that it’s much larger (30-inch display!) and more of an environmental computer device. Using the product, people can interact with information using touch, natural gestures and physical objects. So no mouse or keyboard is required. From the press release:

“Surface turns an ordinary tabletop into a vibrant, dynamic surface that provides effortless interaction with all forms of digital content through natural gestures, touch and physical objects. Beginning at the end of this year, consumers will be able to interact with Surface in hotels, retail establishments, restaurants and public entertainment venues.”

It’s best seen to be believed, so check out the videos on the Surface website. Here are some screenshots from those videos:

This is the kind of technology Microsoft does best - a hardware/software amalgam, but not requiring the branding and design touches that Apple is so good at. The beauty of Surface is that it will be integrated into the environment (i.e. tables), so it doesn’t need to be a cool accessory for humans (like iPod, Macbook, etc). Microsoft isn’t so good at accessorizing, but it definitely has the technology chops to create impressive hardware/software products like Surface and XBox.