Daily Archives: 01/04/2010

Apr 1 2010

Rebuilding an Arabic PC

Work today was good, got quite a lots done, a computer came in from a friend of staff member, an Arab family who the computer is used by their son.  A very badly dented case with the drive bay covers partly fallen off and a CD drive that was stuck.  Windows XP would not boot, and safe mode, and last known good configuration, and even a repair install from my XP CD would not get it working.

Tried some new tactics which worked quite well to rescue this reasonable spec Athlon 64 PC to remove it from an impossibly tangled up operating system which rendered it completely useless.

Using one of my favourite tools, Hirens boot CD (currently on version 10.2) is my preferred Swiss army knife of dozens of software tools to do all kinds of fixing work.  Some of these apps boot from DOS or from a live version of Windows which starts without touching any of the files of the hard disk of the computer on the bench being tested.  Here I used a tool which scans the hard disk for licence keys for Windows and Microsoft Office.  Here I could find these and write them down on a bit of paper.  Here in the middle east software and DVD piracy is rampant but its not my place to accuse someone breaching a licence of software.  Here this process lets me find the key of the software off the non-bootable hard disk of the computer and keep it safe for re-installation using my own set of media, using their key.

I took a spare 80gb hard disk off my shelf of spare parts, and disconnected the drive from the computer and rested the spare drive on the sideways-turned tower unit of the PC, and set about a fresh install of Windows.  Here I am using XP with Service Pack 3 merged in, after the usual 45 minutes, XP is running and I get the hardware drivers of the web site of the PC board manufacturer.  Then (with no live connection to the internet yet) I put on IE8, and Adobe Acrobat reader, I put in the network connection and put on the free AVG 9 antivirus.  Then I go about putting on all the Windows updates, theres a lot of them, so I can leave it for an hour and continue closing some helpdesk calls, fixing a loud fan on my Talpiyot office PC, checking the network, and also doing face to face support with the users at this site.

Later on, I set up the original (only 10gb) hard disk as a secondary drive and search it for viruses and spyware.  It came up completely clean. Office 2003 got installed with the previously written down licence key.

Next was to copy each of the files of the three user profiles onto the new install of XP from the old installation, all office files, photos and music, browser favourites, etc.  I have done this quite a bit in my old job and is quite easy.  However the profile names are in Arabic which I don’t speak.  But I can use F2 to rename it, but instead of renaming, I copied the highlighted Arabic script to make some new profile names.   Under the language set up in Windows XP I already have Hebrew and Arabic as well as US English, so its easy to change the keyboard layout to either of these three.

Incidentally a new challenge I found was Windows XP language set up shows multiple variations of Arabic, for various nations such as Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Kuwait, Qatar, Jordan, Egypt, etc, as there is no option for Israeli or Palestinian Arabic, I chose Jordanian Arabic I guess would be the closest.

Now all the files salvageable were on the new build of the computer.   There were some games and language translation software but without the media these would need to be reinstalled by the user.  I decided to clone using Norton Ghost the contents of the hard disk that was property of my work to the original drive inside the computer.   The files copied across perfectly but again Windows crashed when starting.   It was here I decided the original 10gb drive was defective, so I put it in the bin, and my manager was happy to give this old drive as a gift to this user, as I had plenty of spares.

As the case on this PC looks battered and damaged, I took the chance to transplant over the whole innards to the now empty chassis of another clone PC which looks a lot nicer, plus there’s a replacement CD drive in it (I tend to throw old CD drives away as all PCs used by volunteers and staff have new DVD writers.  I wrote a letter and taped it to the computer to explain the work I had done and hope they enjoy the completely overhauled machine.

Jonathan is well conversed in doing helpdesk and support across several countries and continents for this current role and my previous regular paid jobs.  He is looking for sources of financial help as I provide the backbone of IT assistance to a busy charity in the holyland, both face to face, using remote software, or even ‘blind’ by talking through users through using icons, menus or commands from memory. If you would like consulting or support of any kind of IT challenge for your home or business PC or laptop in exchange for a small financial gift please do get in touch. :o)

Apr 1 2010

Why Twitter = Twaddle

Some people who know me know I don’t like Twitter.

I have an account and its really only to promote this site, on some people I follow occasionally something could be interesting on IT, the middle east and various other topics that interest me.   Often Twitter is used as a casual way of running commentary of your life, as below:

MrXYZ – The number 7 bus is 6 minutes and 24.54 seconds late
about 2 hours ago
On my Texas Instruments scientific calculator

MrXYZ – I am putting on some trousers
about 3 hours ago
On the web

You also have people following VIPs, with people such as Stephen Fry who are the most followed people.  Stephen is absolutely brilliant man and a genius of acting, speaking and writing, one of the absolute legends of Britishness.  Its no secret he suffers from depression, but I think if you are going through something like this, its better to phone up or see a close friend and spill out what’s troubling you rather than write it online, like what happened recently when he ceased using Twitter for a short while due to he perceived as being people mocking or being unkind about something that was troubling him.

Gowala is one of the pointless add ons I see with iPhone users I see, “I am in blahblah pub” or such and such a place, as if anyone would ever care.

I don’t have an iPhone I only have a fairly simple clamshell type handset, mainly because where as I just need to make calls, I used to like the Voice notes feature which used to be on almost Motorola handsets in the last 10 years or so, press the side button where you can record your voice (including in a call)  and then set it to a alarm message, which was a brilliantly simple feature which needs a minimum of button pressing to keep something an important reminder, sadly my current now two year old V8 phone doesn’t have this.   I would quite like to have some simple version of Google documents and Gmail, seeing as I like to type notes and access to brief writings of things to do on any computer anywhere on the internet, with this I have more or less dumped my need to use Microsoft Office or Open Office now, or remember which of my work or home PCs or USB sticks I saved something on.  For this reason I might opt for Android phone at some point in the future.  The iPhone is a very slick and well designed piece of kit, I am not knocking it, its just I don’t want to pay £600 for 18 months worth of ownership for a phone, be it, by a contract or pay as you go.

Because of the portable, update from on the toilet or anywhere nature of Twitter, people may write things when they are angry, emotionally damaged or drunk, this could lead to writing things you later regret and at worse could cost a relationship or career.

I quite like blogging.  Twitter has meant a few people I have seen that used to blog, don’t bother any more and only put small snippets of the things that interest them on Twitter instead which is sad.   One of the things I like blogging as articles stay there on the internet indefinitely, so a helpful how-to on doing something I have learnt or want to share with the rest of the world, the ethic the internet should be; sharing what you know and learn what you don’t.  With articles of Twitter no one cares what you wrote yesterday, and I am not even sure if old tweets can be found with Google.

Like Facebook its often a vehicle to spread rumors and weighs on peoples naivety with the huge potential to spread scams and spam.   For instance today, as its April fool’s day, apparently numerous fake stories ended up on some newspapers as fact.  I also sometimes worry about those short URL type sites that condense web addresses into something brief that make it fit into the limited amount of space for a tweet, this could send you to something quite unsavoury or dangerous.

I think its likely the Twitter will get replaced by something better and will probably fade away after a couple of years or so.

Maybe an analogue version of Twitter would be to wear a hat and put some velcro letters on about what you are upto?

The only thing I do like about is purely to point people towards a more detailed writing about something, a free taste of a more detailed piece of information.

Using WordPress is a template for my blog I have mixed opinions on.  Its great that its free and has many different features to edit and change things how you like it, its not at all standards compliant, and changing the the layout of your blog often makes formatting go screwy, what’s in the draft layout is not always what you get in the final published result.  There’s also Blogger (owned by Google) and some other ones which are also free, and good as a ready to run way to blog without needing web developer background.  I like to call this freeze dried web design.  You use your own creative knowhow to write the content and there is a pre-fabricated template to put it all together.

I like and deeply hate Facebook at the same time as well, but that’s for article another day.