Windows Server 2008, Boot Camp and a Macbook

Well, it works. Here's some notes for anyone wanting to do it:

1) The 64 bit versions of Windows Server 2008 will only work properly on a Macbook Pro or Mac Pro and not on a MacBook. It all goes OK until you try to install the drivers from the Leopard disc: the KeyAgent and MacHAL drivers simply refuse to load, so none of the hardware really works (OK, if you can do without any kind of right click and put with deranged mouse movement then maybe you'll be able to get away with it but I wouldn't bother. There are several forum posts from people with the same problem but no answers.)

2) The Windows Server 2008 ISOs you get from MSDN will not boot into Boot Camp without a good bit of tweaking. Fortunately, the required software is free and the instructions are good. (The reason is, sigh, failing to follow the standards)

Incidentally, if you try with a DVD burnt straight from a MSDN ISO you get this cryptic menu:

1.
2.
Select CD-ROM Boot Type:

(Pressing the 1 or 2 key does nothing)

3) Windows Server 2008 is designed for a minimalist install, to reduce the "attack surface" as the jargon goes. So the wireless network capability is not installed by default: it needs to be added in the "Add Features" part of 'Server Manager' (which starts up by default anyway). That's also where you can turn on the Desktop Experience, which gets you the Aero desktop and Media Player etc, though you still have to start the Themes service to get Aero. There are lots of other options available. Incidentally, the Windows Audio service isn't set to start automatically either. Did I say minimalist? After only an hour or so I am really starting to like this OS. Funny how Vista went in the opposite direction - more on that later maybe.

This still is not enough to connect to your wireless network though - even after rebooting it won't find it by default, I think because the Wireless service doesn't start by default (I chose that option from 'Diagnose and Repair' from the network icon and it worked, but as I didn't start it myself I can't be sure)

4) One more thing to do: go into System Properties (sorry, 'Advanced System Settings') then the Advanced tab (presumably super-advanced!) and choose Settings\Advanced (TRIPLE Advanced!) and change 'Adjust for best performance of' from 'Background Services' to 'Programs'.

Why install Windows Server 2008 instead of Vista? See point 3: minimalist = good, fast and less likely to go wrong, and on a MacBook I have no hardware compatibility problems to worry about. Also no UAC bothering me as it doesn't mind you logging on as the Administrator account (if you're administering a server then you're presumed to know what you're doing. I think I do, so I like that.)

Problems? I have three unknown devices in Device Manager. Looking at the Hardware IDs in the Details tab, they all look like Bluetooth, which I don't use anyway.

If you do this and you haven't used Windows Server 2003, watch out for Internet Explorer Enhanced Security Configuration: it will block any site not in it's whitelist (i.e basically all of them), which can make downloading Firefox a bit troublesome: you need to add mozilla.org to see the site and then the download location to get the installer file. It works better than the previous version, though, and it's easy enough to get FF. Or Opera, or Safari, whichever. Or if you must you can turn off Enhanced Security Configuration, it used to be in what is now called "Windows Features" but I'm not even going to look: now Windows Update is in Control Panel there's no need for me to use IE at all. (Edit: it's now in Server Manager and it's easy to turn off: just as well as Visual Studio help goes berserk when it's on..)

Other than that, It's just like Vista in Boot Camp: two finger scrolling works, but tap-to-click doesn't, you can get a context menu by pressing two fingers on the trackpad and clicking.

Here's a list of some more links I found useful but haven't mentioned yet:

Windows 2008 Server on my Macbook Pro

Turning a Mac Mini into a virtual windows hpc server 2008 compute cluster

Installing Windows Server on a Macbook Pro

For server geeks: The 'Book Of Longhorn' - Changes in Functionality from Windows Server 2003 with SP1 to Windows Server 200

How to make Windows Server 2008 just like Vista

Mark Lawson Talks To Me

There's a series on BBC4 called "Mark Lawson talks to.." which I hugely recommend if a) you're old enough to have heard of George Cole or Barry Cryer or David Renwick (creator of One Foot in the Grave) and b) you can stand to watch a program which is an hour long and consists of two people talking. OK, c) you're over 40 years old.

BBC4 has I suppose become my default TV station now, as Radio 4 is my default radio station: FIP reception is a bit sketchy in our house and I can't get it on the telly. It's great to be old!

Vista ANGRY

Oh, but not as angry as me. My installation of Vista Ultimate on my MacBook is FUCKED. Microsoft's 'Frankenbuild' update (kb929391) seems to be the culprit: the Software Licensing Service won't start (error 0xc004d103), so the Control Panel is empty (reduced functionality?) as in my previous post. I have enabled all services - even the obviously stupid ones like "Tablet PC" (yes, Windows can't tell if it's running on a tablet and start the service itself manually) - and rebooted. Nothing, nada, nil.

This isn't so bad, I can still get to the Control Panel applets by expanding the dropdown in My Computer, but after a few times you can tell when things are going bad in Windows. Incidentally, a Google search for 'empty control panel vista' (without the quotes) gets 1,680,000 results so it's not just me.

The only thing I have done recently was to try to start Vista via "My Boot Camp" in Parallels (which lets you run Windows as a virtual machine in OSX). It failed (it always fails for me) and the next time I booted into Vista it installed "something" and demanded an immediate reboot. Maybe it was KB929391, maybe it was a Parallels something, maybe Parallels messed with Windows and made Vista angry. Parallels asked for Admin permissions before trying to start Vista, which I thought was odd, but hey, I'm just a user, why tell me what's going on.

Still, I was thinking about sticking the Windows Server 2008 64 bit version on it anyway, like this guy has. Bearing in mind that my copy of Vista is from my MSDN subscription and my employer pays a couple of thousand pounds per year for it, I think I will raise a support incident with Microsoft about it first, as I really don't want to have to spend the time reinstalling when I could be working. (Edit: I can't be arsed to call Microsoft, they make it very hard to do deliberately)

I tried to like Vista, I really did. My new app looks great in it, I like some of the things they have done 'under the hood' like ASLR - but for sure it doesn't like me. It's fast and super-slick on my MacBook, and up till now everything worked. Well, that's Windows for you: fine until it goes wrong, then you're in a world of pain..

Edit: Now Windows Update fails with error code 80070426. Apple Software Update (for Windows) fails with a "Out Of Memory" error.

I'm downloading WS2008 x64 (via Virtual PC on my G4 as ever.) - nothing to lose if it doesn't work right (except my time) as Vista obviously needs reinstalling, unless my commenter Richard can save the day :)

This isn't right

Vista has misplaced it's Control Panel! Time for yet another reboot..

Lydia oh Lydia, oh have you met Lydia..

I came across this website on a blog entry and I think it deserves more publicity, especially as the owner has it up for sale: www.modestapparelchristianclothinglydiaofpurpledressescustomsewing.com - so that's Modest Apparel Christian Clothing Lydia Of Purple Dresses Custom Sewing.com. Have a poke about, there's lots to see.

Lydia of Purple specializes in custom sewn garments for homeschooling mothers that homeschool their young ladies and girls in modest dress.

Somehow I think 'homeschooling' has a subtext here.

The War On Stupidity

The Wire is a US drama series: if you haven't seen it, I envy you, you have a treat in store. If you have you'll know it's about the drug trade in Baltimore, seen from both sides.

Anyway, there's a quote from it which for me perfectly encapsulates the War On Drugs even though it's apparently about a turf war between two drug gangs: the quality of the writing of the series is so high that I wouldn't be at all surprised if that was exactly the effect they wanted to achieve.

It don't matter who did what to whom: we went to war, and now there ain't no turning back.

I mean, shit, that's what war is, you know - once you in it, you in it. If it's a lie, then we fight on that lie, but we gotta fight" (Hear it)

Oh, there's this quote as well:

Detective Greggs: "Fighting the war on drugs, one brutality case at a time"
Detective Carver: "You can't even call this shit a war."
Detective Hauk: "Why not?"
Detective Carver: "Wars end.."

Edit: This applies just as well to the War On Terrorism. Hopefully not the second bit..

Another edit: apparently, The Wire is Barack Obama's favourite TV show..

New Mismatism

New coin designs have been announced by the Royal Mint. Nice.

Incidentaly, on their faq page, they link to an email enquiry form. Unfortunately the URL is www.r2d2net.com/help/contactus.aspx (which doesn't exist) instead of www.royalmint.com/help/contactus.aspx. Obviously this needs repairing and "if any of my circuits or gears will help, I'll gladly donate them".. (found the correct quote thanks to Wookiepedia (groan))

Two leads are better than one

I bought a little 250GB USB hard disk. It comes with a strange thing I've never seen before: a split USB lead which goes into 2 USB sockets at once. Just as well I haven't got a MacBook Air with it's single USB socket!

Presumably this allows it to read from both or write to both or read from one and write to the other, or power through one and data through the other - who knows, Seagate certainly don't say.

Edit: Canadian Rob tells Robin it's for power, but you don't have to use both.

Applications

I used to use a bunch of methods of starting applications in OSX Tiger: spotlight, the recent apps menu, fire up a finder instance, but now in Leopard I only ever use my Application stack from the dock. I've created aliases for the most useful programs that aren't directly in the Applications folder (ie they are in subfolders or /Developer) and turned on the highlight effect. I've even started to develop mouse-memory for where they are in the stack.

Try it, you might like it.. here's a pic of mine.

So true...

My favourite aphorism of the moment is:

Good judgement comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgement.

There's some confusion about who to attribute it to though.

All right, we don't really know why we recommended it..

Bit of a WTF from Amazon:

Lots and lots and lots and lots and lots

I finally went out and bought a disk big enough to back up all the disks and data on my poor old PowerMac G4 with Time Machine. Bit surprised to find there are 939,685 items on it: I deleted fink and all sorts of other stuff after the Leopard upgrade. Maybe I need to start a new user account and dump this one. Maybe I need to do a clean install after all - I have had a few Colonel Panics (i.e. crashes), though fewer since 10.5.2 came out.

Nothing, nada, nil

I watched The English Surgeon on Sunday night, a superb documentary about an English neurosurgeon called Henry Marsh who goes to the Ukraine every year to hew out brain tumours with Homebase drills and a Ukraninan doctor called (of course) Igor. I wasn't watching at first, just left it on after MOTD2, but by the end there wasn't a dry eye in the room.

The last line (spoken by Henry) was:

"What are we if we don't try to help others? We're nothing, nothing at all"

What a scam!

I wish I'd thought of this .uk.com stuff - Centralnic will sell you yourname.uk.com for £32.50!

What this basically means is they bought the domain uk.com (and lots of other codes) and they are selling people subdomains. For £32.50!

(About subdomains: if I owned stuartd.com, I could set up blog.stuartd.com and fubar.stuartd.com and crapola.stuartd.com as many others as I cared to do _for free_.)

Dead Brum Society

footballfunerals.co.uk are the "Official Contracted Funeral Directors to Birmingham City Football Club" and will give you a good send off if you're a blue. Slightly misleading domain name, or perhaps they hope to expand and become the Official Contracted Funeral Directors to more clubs, or maybe the league itself.

Who is the sire, sir?

"What Is Radio 4?

Created in 1967 out of the Home Service, Radio 4 is the "daddy" of speech radio."

This is on their interactive TV page and mobile pages.. Odd that they would choose a quote from Scum.

First-order Freak

After my previous post on my fellow employees, I've been wondering which category I fall into. Oh dear!

Be like has real

These are random quotes from the first few paragraphs on blog.webhosting.uk.com - this has to be dodgy translation, surely, no-one would actually write these..?

There are various reasons why an online sector individual suchlike you has decided to shift to a new web hosting providers. Your old web hosting provider be like has real impecunious specialized funding

Doing channelize in inferior than one month clip under frame will put your website in assay of untracked.

Now, sign-up your new web hosting bringing once you make definite the morpheme familiar mentioned above.

In most cases, you already jazz all the files of your website on your local computer.

In addition, you should run all the hyperlinks in the modal web pages if affirmable to secure no humble course.

Satanic Jon reckons it's keyword injection, but I'm not so sure. Funnily enough, the older entries are quite comprehensible, maybe someone there took a trip too..

Freak Or Unique?

I work for a fairly large local government organisation, so I get plenty of chances to play "Freak Or Unique?" when I have to leave my desk.. so far the score is 237-0 (with maybe a dozen or so exceptions)

MacVista takes a trip, gets double vision

I installed Vista Service Pack 1 last night in Boot Camp my MacBook: well, I tried: three restarts and two hours later it failed (error 0xC004F013) and had to roll the update back - which it did, more or less successfully, a couple of reboots (and another hour or so) later. Everything seemed OK except I had a quite large message on the bottom of my screen with the build number (6000) and a message saying my copy of Vista isn't genuine. Cheek!

I wouldn't have minded the restarts - I am very glad Vista and Leopard do updates after logoff and before shutdown, it's much more sensible than doing them in userspace - but I was only expecting one like previous service packs so I didn't bother changing my boot disk to Windows, which meant I had to sit about watching it and waiting for it to reboot.

It seems the second time the service pack is installed it works, but failure took so long - it was 86% through phase three (of three) that it really started to drag - I uninstalled update KB941649 which is the bad boy just in case and resinstalled and that's more like it. Took a bit less than an hour: it's build 6001 now, which is a departure from Microsoft's usual build nomenclature.


Oh, I do have one problem - Vista now thinks this MacBook has two monitors in it..