Tech Ramblings from a Rainier Day

Windows 7 BETA: Disk usage

So far I am happy with disk usage.

I have a 20GB partition on my C: drive.

• The windows directory currently is using almost 8GB of space.
• I had to turn off hibernation to recover 2.5GB of space (Run CMD as administrator, then type “powercfg -H off”)
• The computer automatically configures the pagefile at over 3GB since I have 3GB of RAM.  I can tune that down if I need to reclaim more space.
• When I installed iTunes I accidentally moved my music (~4GB) back into my profile.  I moved this back to another partition.
• I moved my outlook OST file (was 4GB on my Vista machine) to another partition as well.

Currently have more than 8GB free.  Let’s see how that holds up.

Windows 7 BETA: Great updates to the start menu and taskbar

I love the start menu and task bar.

First, the start menu is snappy.  Browsing through and clicking items is mostly immediate, what a wonderful change from Vista.

The task bar is great, I love the new Desktop preview.  When you hover over an item it sets up previews for that group side-by-side, then you can hover over those windows and preview them (it creates placeholders for the other items and shows the live window).

The systray, or notification area, has great improvements as well.

Windows 7 Beta: Encountered an Assertion Failure

In on day one for using Windows 7 (Build 7000) on my Optiplex GX620.  I’ve been getting a lot of “Encountered an assertion failure” all over the place.  Since it’s just now in public beta, I was not expecting to find anything on a Google search, which I did not.

I’m not sure if this is a driver issue, yet.

I tracked down one of the biggest issues that would make this happen.  On Internet Explorer 8 I had switched my search provider to Google.  The errors would popup whenever I would start typing and I tracked it down to Suggestions being enabled. If you click on Manage Search Providers (which would give me an assertion failure), then right click on Google and click Disabled Suggestions, it works pretty well.

I am running almost everything in firefox now though, as Internet Explorer has crashed on me quite a number of times.

I also get assertion errors in other locations, such as changing the location to My Music.

I would give screenshots of the assertion error, but it’s not letting me browse my computer when attempting to upload an image.

Installing Windows 7 Beta

I waited until the Beta was released to the public to download and install Windows 7. I had a bit better luck through our Partner technet site than others had downloading it; I got the 2.2GB package in under 90 minutes on the super Comcast highway.

I first attempted to upgrade my existing Vista installation (running on a Dell Optiplex GX620).  This failed since I had only 2.2GB of space left on my 20GB C: Partition (Gotta love Vista’s bloatedness).  There were a couple of other reasons as well, one being the build that my Vista machine was on (which makes no sense to me).

So I threw my profile into another partition and performed a fresh install.  I didn’t time it, but I’d say about an hour later I was ready to use Windows 7.

The display looked a bit funky at first, which was not surprising.  I switched to an older Intel driver for Vista for my 82945G Express onboard video card. It helped a bit, but once I switched from the Windows 7 theme to the Landscape theme, the colors were much more appealing and I loved the look.

The sound card, Soundmax Digital Audio, did not install.  I grabbed a number of drivers, non of which seemed to work.  The frustrating part is that Dell never released any Vista drivers for my machine.  Eventually, I found the Soundmax drivers for Vista (Dell Support Site) from another blog.  The first time installing failed, but once I rebooted the drivers installed.

First impression: It’s definitely a beta, but I already love it more than Vista, which is not saying much.

System CPU Usage

I was troubleshooting an issue on an SBS 2003 Premium server today when I noticed that the CPU usage seemed to be higher than normal on a consistent basis.  While it was only hovering about 20-30% (2 Dual-Core processors), it was consistent and did not dip below that level. 

I found a helpful blog post (http://blogs.technet.com/markrussinovich/archive/2008/04/07/3031251.aspx) that pointed me in the direction of KernRate, which turned out to be exactly what I needed to track the problem down.

After running KernRate for about a minute, it showed intelppm at 57%, ntkrnlpa at 25%, and vsapint at 10%.  From looking around on the Internet it looked like intelppm is an internal power management feature of the cpu, ntkrnlpa is the kernel, and vsapint was a trend micro system process (Trend Micro Worry Free Advanced is installed).  The first two items were probably not the culprit so I killed the Realtime scan in services and the System process went back down to a normal level.  After starting the realtime scan process again, after a minute or two the cpu usage spiked again. 

The server is not set to scan during the day.  The trend micro systray icon shows that it is not currently scanning.  However it is obviously doing something.

We’ll be contacting Trend Micro support tomorrow to follow up on this problem.  Unfortunately, it seems par for the course with the kernel memory usage problems, startup items that need to be stopped, and ip stack corruption that I am really losing trust in this product. 

Google BETA

Google’s new browser, Chrome, has a number of vulnerabilities that have been found in the first week (http://www.crn.com/security/210500382;jsessionid=5MHY03QKS4R1EQSNDLRSKHSCJUNN2JVN).  While it is listed as Beta, to me Google’s Beta term doesn’t mean as much as any other company that uses it. 

Google has software that is in Beta perpetually.  How many people use Gmail?  How long has it been available for use?  Gmail has been out since 2004, and available to the general public for over 18 months.  Google Docs has been available for 2 years.  Google Video was launched in 2005.

What other software company does this?  I’ve never taken Google seriously.  They come off with an ego the size of Steve Jobs, but lack any kind of focus to finish their products well.

Other than their search, I find their lack of graphic design capabilities to be laughable.  Yes, minimalist design can work for search, but it does not work for chat, browsers, RSS readers, document editors, email programs, etc.  Google is working off of its name for now, but like Microsoft it needs to create better products in a much shorter cycle.  If I can use a program with the same or better functionality, and it is pleasing to the eye, of course I’m going to use it over the Google version.

Spoolsv.exe with 100% CPU Usage

We had an issue recently where there was a cpu lock on spoolsv.exe.  At first I figured it was related to some new drivers being installed (Trying to get an All in One printer to work in terminal services). 

The ultimate fix was to delete some temporary spool files that had not automatically been deleted.  These are found at

C:\WINDOWS\system32\spool\PRINTERS

Thanks to http://torque.oncloud8.com/archives/000384.html for the information

VMWare Server with Broadcom NICs

Last week we were attempting to install a brand new SBS 2003 server for a new client, then have a terminal server running in a VMWare environment with Windows 2008.  We only had the onboard Broadcom NICs.  I’ve had so many problems with both VMWare and Virtual Server when using these NICs, so we typically configure an additional Intel NIC when we know we are going to virtualize, but there was a mistake in the order. 

Once we had the virtual server up and running, we found that we had a problem where it could not get to the Internet.  At first it seemed related to some frustrating firewall issue, it was showing that it was on the Domain Profile, but was local only.  We even went as far as installing Windows 2003 instead, but no luck.  I did every possible VMWare configuration option with regards to the network, and nothing worked at all. 

Since we’ve had trouble with the Broadcom cards before, I was skeptical about them from the beginning.  Sure enough, I found other people with similar problems.

In the properties of the adapter, the following need to be turned off:

Checksum Offload

Large Send Offload

 

Also, I did not need to do the following to fix the problem, but I did turn off Automatic choosing of available physical network adapter and forced VMnet0 to the adapter of my choosing.

I found the information here: http://communities.vmware.com/thread/151036?tstart=0&start=15.

Panasonic U1

I’ve been looking at the ultra-mobile computer offerings for the last year, hoping to provide our employees with a tiny computer that is always connected to the Internet.  I’ve looked at the OQO’s, the new HP, and some others, but I just don’t feel like they are worth the price tag, yet.

Today while browsing crn.com, I came across the Panasonic U1, which I had not heard of before (I’m not really a gadgeteer).  It has a touchscreen, keyboard, lightweight, and is tiny.  I know Toughbooks have always been pricey, and this one is no exception at $2,500.  Here’s hoping we can see an increase in performance, with the features an IT mobile force needs, for something more in the business laptop price range.