Goodbye Vista. Hello Performance.
I've just made a nearly 3-year-old computer feel brand new. Since the beginning, my relationship with Vista had been severely bifurcated. I liked some of the new security features (even the ones that garnered the most complaints) and I liked the overall appearance of the operating system. But I detested the sluggish performance, the long boot and shutdown times, and the fact that two years down the road some programs still don't work properly with Vista. I had been thinking about formatting the drive and reinstalling Windows XP, but decided it would be too much work and take time I didn't have. I'd wait until next year's Windows 7, I thought. Then a helpful disaster stepped in.
Sunday evening (November 23), Diskeeper reported that it needed to perform a boot-time defrag operation. This is something I've done before, so I approved the request and rebooted the machine. Everything seemed to go well, but then the machine wouldn't boot. To make a long and somewhat tedious story short, the master boot record had been damaged (I was able to fix it) and the file allocation table was a mess (no chance of repair).
Oops.
Well, as they say, this is what backup is for. I would have to reinstall the operating system and the most pressing concern was a choice: Vista or XP.
Panic [ ]Now, [ ]Later, or [X]Never?
There was no need for panic. The drive with the problem was drive C, which holds the operating system, applications, some configuration settings, and personalizations. The data drives (D, M, and N) and the local backup drive (Z) were all fine. And I knew that my Carbonite backup was safe and secure hundreds of miles away. So instead of worrying about lost files and missing data, I could concentrate fully on reinstalling Windows.
The installation hit a snag on step 1, when I booted to to the Windows XP disc. The installer showed only the 3 attached external USB drives because the two serial ATA (SATA) drives were installed internally and configured as RAID (even though RAID wasn't in play). The driver I needed was on a floppy disk and the computer has no floppy drive, but I did have a USB floppy drive.
This time, I was able to get all the way to step 2 before running into a problem. The installer could read the USB-based floppy during the start-up phase, so it loaded the drivers and the SATA drives were visible. But later, when the installer needed to read the driver disk again, the USB device was unavailable.
On Monday, I purchased floppy drive to install in the system box. When I opened the computer, I found no data cable for a floppy drive and all of the smaller power connectors were in use. The power problem would be easy to solve and I might have been able to find a data cable somewhere around the house, but there was another problem: The hinged flap on the floppy drive was broken.
I called Marshall Thompson at TCR Computers and discussed the situation with him. TCR is the company that built the computer. Marshall said I wouldn't need the RAID driver if I configured the SATA drives as IDE in the BIOS. He also suggested that I disable the D drive to avoid having Windows decide to install itself on the wrong drive.
I disabled D, but the Windows installer saw one of the USB drives as C and showed what should have been the C drive as D. To resolve that problem I removed all of the USB drives and rebooted. With only 1 drive, the installer had no choice but to see the first drive as C. Windows can be reasoned with if you're holding a large enough hammer.
Installing the operating system was uneventful and took about 30 minutes. Then I reattached the second internal drive and the 3 USB drives. A quick check showed that all files were present, as expected. The drive letters were all wrong, but that was expected, too, and it's easy to fix. Next I hunted down the Ethernet driver so that I could connect to the Internet and activate Windows.
Security First
After activating Windows, the next order of business was to install AVG Antivirus and then to connect to the Windows Update site to download and install XP service pack 3. That took about 30 minutes. Then I returned to Windows Update to obtain and install 30 security, hardware, and driver updates, including IE7. This consumed about 15 minutes.
Windows XP's firewall is inadequate, so I then downloaded and installed the Carbonite firewall and fixed the drive letter problems by assigning correct designations with the Windows Disk Manager.
With the computer beginning to resemble an operating machine, it was time to start pulling back files from my Carbonite backup. After downloading and installing Carbonite's software, I identified the most important files I wanted to restore to drive C. In all, about 14,000 files. The restoration process took just a few hours, but I left Carbonite in recovery mode because I hadn't restored all files yet. By the time I finished, I had restored 83,433 files from Carbonite. About 60,000 of those were files I didn't need.
Why restore them then? Because I knew the Vista Users directory would contain files I would want. I just didn't know which files they were. One example: The Adobe Lightroom database. My most recent local backup of the database was nearly a week old and I had added hundreds of files since then. The Carbonite backup was current. Time saved: Probably about 6 hours.
The Disaster that Wasn't
Some might say that I should have maintained an image of C, and they're probably right, but that wouldn't have helped in this case because I'd already decided to go back to XP. With no more than about 4 hours of effort, I had the most critical applications (e-mail, Web, Office, and time billing) running again.
I think of backup the way I think of brakes on a car: If you don't keep the backup system well maintained, you're going to be in a lot of trouble sooner or later. My primary computer has 5 disk drives: 2 built-in serial ATA devices and 3 external USB drives. Files are distributed this way:
- C: Operating system and applications. This is the drive with the boot sector for Windows.
- D: Database, programming files, websites, graphics, publications, and the like. Work that I do for myself and for clients. The GRUB boot manager is here, too, and Linux boots from this drive. (More on that in a bit.)
- N: Downloads (freeware, shareware, and commercial applications), certain corporate files that I have at home to work on. The downloads would be easy to replace and the corporate files will already be on at least two other computers and will be maintained by the corporate backup system, so I'm not really concerned about them.
- M: Music that I have downloaded from Itunes or Emusic, or that I have ripped from my own CDs. This drive also holds reference materials and instructional programs, most of which are available for download or are on CDs or DVDs that are in my possession.
- Z: Local hot backup of current working files from the other 4 drives. In the event of a catastrophic disk failure in the desktop PC, I can attach this drive to the notebook computer and be back in operation within 60 seconds.
I keep the local backup because restoring from any on-line backup (as I mentioned, mine is Carbonite) will be limited by the speed of the Internet. I could restore critical files in just a few hours, but it would take at least a week to restore everything from backup. The local backup violates the primary rule of backups by being in the same room with the computer it's protecting, but the local backup is safeguarded by Carbonite (drives C and D) or I consider the files to be expendable (losing all of my music files would be a gigantic annoyance, but I have much of the music library backed up on DVDs that are stored at the office.)
Websites are a particular concern for me. The sites and the development files used to create the sites are all on my D drive. They're also backed up to the Z drive, to an external USB backup that I store at the office, and to Carbonite. And there's one more copy squirreled away, outside the webroot on the server that hosts the website. There is no such thing as "too much backup".
So once again backup saved the day. This was an annoyance, but nothing more.
Windows XP: Speedy Delivery
I had forgotten how fast this computer is supposed to be. Boot time can now reasonably be measured in seconds, not minutes, and shutting down the computer no longer takes up to 10 minutes.
But the best improvement from my perspective is that the disk drives are no longer constantly and continuously thrashing. Under Vista, something always seemed to be performing some operation on the disk drives, even after I turned off most of the Vista services that might have been responsible for the activity.
I'll miss Vista's pretty face, but XP is like an old friend who knows what I like. Maybe Windows 7 will be a big improvement when (If?) it ships in 2009. But for now I'm more than happy with XP.
By November 27, nearly all of the applications I use were installed and configured. I had taken Carbonite out of restore mode and put it back in backup mode. Total number of files lost: Zero as far as I can tell.
An Added Bonus: Ubuntu Linux
With Windows back in operation, I started thinking about the other task that's been in the back of my mind: Converting the machine to dual-boot Ubuntu Linux. I didn't have the current version, so I needed to download the 700MB ISO file and burn a CD. That step took a little less than 30 minutes. The rest was about as easy:
- Boot to the Ubuntu CD and confirm via the Live Session option that the critical hardware components were supported.
- Click the Install icon, review the options, decide how much disk to allocate to Linux, and give the partition editor permission to proceed. At this point, I noticed one oddity: Linux detected drive 1 instead of drive 0 as the boot device, so it wanted to install to drive 1. That meant the boot loader would be installed on the drive that wasn't my primary boot device. The solution would be easy, so I allocated 100GB of the 500GB drive to Linux and proceeded.
- Resizing the existing partition and creating a new partition consumed another half hour or so, then the CD installed Linux on the new partition.
- I expected not to see the GRUB boot manager when I restarted the computer and I wasn't surprised. Windows booted almost as if nothing had happened. The operating system did notice that something had happened to drive D and insisted on running Checkdisk. When that process completed, I confirmed that files I expected to be on the D drive were actually on the D drive and then opened the disk manager to examine the new partition.
The process left a 4GB scrap on the drive so that I'll have a puzzle to solve later. (It seems to be a swap area for Linux.) Now all I had to do was find a way to boot to that partition.- So I restarted the machine and headed for the BIOS settings. There I changed the boot order from drive 0, then drive 1 to drive 1, then drive 0. On the next boot, the GRUB boot loader asked whether I wanted to run Windows or Linux. I selected Windows to confirm that the process would work properly for my primary operating system. It did, so then I restarted the computer again and selected Linux. Again, no problem.
So I guess I should thank Vista for making all this possible.
Want a Free Credit Report? Avoid FreeCreditReport.com
I noticed a spam in my slop bucket. It claimed to be from "FreeCreditReport.com" and the return address was FreeCreditReport.com@UntieGrain.com", so the first thing that I wondered about was UntieGrain. I found that this is actually Elite Suppression Concepts, a company that (in its own words) is "the leading provider of direct marketing solutions and database management that enables marketers to maximize and manage the value of their permission-based subscriber lists." I haven't given Elite Suppression Concepts or UntieGrain permission to mail to me, so clearly this is just an ordinary spam. But if you receive a message such as this on a day when you're thinking about asking for your free credit report, following the link in this spam could cost you nearly $200 per year. That doesn't fit my definition of "free".
"Elite Suppression Concepts creates innovative direct response campaigns," the company's website says, "to promote products and services online. Companies with compelling products can benefit from our expertise in creative design, testing, campaign planning, tracking and optimization." Unique as in sending a message that offers a "free credit report" but then disclaims the offer, "When you order your free report here, you will begin your free trial membership in Triple Advantage Credit Monitoring. If you don't cancel your membership within the 7-day trial period, you will be billed $14.95 for each month that you continue your membership." (Emphasis mine.)
Yep. That sure is innovative all right.
The next paragraph tells you where you can get a credit report that's really free: "ConsumerInfo.com, Inc. and Freecreditreport.com are not affiliated with the annual free credit report program. Under a new Federal law, you have the right to receive a free copy of your credit report once every 12 months from each of the three nationwide consumer reporting companies. To request your free annual report under that law, you must go to www.annualcreditreport.com."
But then they carry innovation one step further. You may click on what looks like a link to the really free credit report, the no matter where you click on the message, you go to this address:
http://mlbhebjgdfmbeagb.untiegrain.com/t.asp?a=c&u=177197292&s=2226&e=17419635. I'm always extraordinarily suspicious of any subdomain that looks like something the cat would spell by walking across the keyboard and "mlbhebjgdfmbeagb" fits that description nicely. If you follow that link, you'll be redirected:
HTTP/1.1 302 Object moved
https://www.freecreditreport.com/pm/Order1.aspx?areaid=22&pkgid=X2THZ&SiteVersionID=717&Site
ID=100219&sc=668741&bcd=11/20BlueHearThis
Who owns "freecreditreport.com"? The domain is registered to Experian, one of the three credit reporting agencies required by law to provide a free report once per year, but only through "AnnualCreditReport.com".
Experian may or may not have anything to do with the spam. Elite Suppression Concepts may or may not have anything to do with what appears to be a click-fraud operation. It seems to me that any legitimate business should be doing everything it can to avoid accepting business from questionable operations such as this.
But Experian's website (www.experian.com) has the same offer on its main page, along with the micro-type that explains "IMPORTANT INFORMATION: This offer is not related to the free credit report that you are entitled to under federal law. To obtain that report, you must go to www.annualcreditreport.com. The free credit report and score offer above requires enrollment in a trial of Triple Advantage. Cancel anytime during the 7-day trial period* and pay nothing. Otherwise, you will be billed just $14.95 for each month that you continue your membership." The asterisk refers to this qualification: "Monitoring with Experian begins within 48 hours of enrollment in your free trial. Monitoring with Equifax and TransUnion takes approximately 4 days to begin, though in some cases cannot be initiated during your trial period. You may cancel your trial membership any time within 9 days of enrollment without charge."
Do you really need a $15-per-month service to track your credit information? Most experts say that you don't. Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion see these services as cash cows. Every 4 months you can visit AnnualCreditReport.com and pull a report from one of the credit agencies. So save your money.
If you want a real free credit report, you'll be able to obtain it here: AnnualCreditReport.com.
Amazon Kills Donations Service with 3 Days' Notice
Until December 11, Amazon.com offered a "donations" service that was used by many websites, including this one, to collect donations from users. On December 8, the company sent a notice to all users: "Beginning December 11, 2008, the Amazon Honor System will be discontinued. This means that PayBoxes on member websites and PayPages on Amazon.com will no longer function."
Amazon gave no reason for the move, but said that Amazon Honor System members should make plans immediately to remove Honor System PayBoxes from their websites. While I have no problem with the company's decision to abolish the service, giving users just 72 hours' notice seems a bit uncaring.
Eliminating the Amazon option from a website, "can be done by simply removing the HTML code originally provided for PayBoxes from your page code document," Amazon said. On sites such as this one, where the link was on more than 450 pages, that might not be so simple. Fortunately, this website uses Dreamweaver templates, so the process was relatively simple. Other technologies, such as server-side includes, would also make changing hundreds or thousands of pages easy. But developers who simply pasted the code on page after page would have been faced with changing every single page in just a few days.
So, that explains why the Amazon link that used to be at the bottom of every page is now gone and why that link has been replaced with one from PayPal. Amazon said that the Amazon Honor System "has served an important function for members and for Amazon.com since its inception in Fall 2001" and promised to continue support for charitable giving "with new technologies".
Nerdly News
The Browser Moving Target Keeps Moving
Firefox 3.1 is on the way. Beta 2 has been released and the folks at Mozilla are talking about improved performance and compatibility as being major enhancements in the version. If Firefox is your primary browser and you use a lot of plug-ins, you may want to delay a bit because new versions invariably break a lot of the add-ons.
Or, as Mozilla puts it, "Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 is a public preview release intended for developer testing and community feedback. It includes many new features as well as improvements to performance, web compatibility, and speed. We recommend that you read the release notes and known issues before installing this beta."
With the release date approaching, this beta is available in 54 languages so that testers can confirm that localized versions work right.
A new "Private Browsing Mode" similar to Chrome's stealth mode allows users to browse without having Firefox store any traces of where you’ve been. This is great for online holiday shopping (or porn surfing). And, if you forget, you can easily remove the history of your past few hours of browsing or remove all traces of a specific website.
A new TraceMonkey JavaScript engine is enabled by default and is supposed to provide faster Javascript rendering. Faster rendering is also included in the new Gecko layout engine, which is the component that controls the appearance of sites.
For more information, see the Firefox website.
Yahoo Continues to Slide
Yahoo is cutting another 1500 jobs as the one high-flying company continues to slip. And the company has amended a "poison-pill" employee severance agreement that it put in place when Microsoft was trying to acquire Yahoo. The changes caused a rebound in Yahoo shares on Wall Street. But the price is still less than half of what Microsoft had offered and Yahoo deemed "insufficient".
The company employs about 15,000 people worldwide. Jerry Yang, who is stepping down as CEO, said the reductions are hard but necessary. In a memo to employees, Yang emphasized what he called the need to align costs with revenues.
Yahoo still has substantial value as a brand. It is one of the most popular websites. Yahoo's search engine is the Internet's second most popular, although it's far behind Google. Yahoo has about a 20% market share and Microsoft has less than 10%. The rest is almost entirely Google.
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