Restless C#ding

Here’s an easy commandline way to make the size of a virtual disk (virtual hard disk) larger.

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Note that this still requires getting the additional space added to the partition in Windows – which will require a repartitioning tool.

Fortunately, Vista's disk manager allows you to extend existing partitions into the unpartitioned space. All you have to do is click on the drive and hit extend.

Told a friend I'd fix their wireless issue after the manufacturer quoted them $1k for a simple wireless fix. Turns out that's not actually (that) crazy (if you consider how overpriced their parts are). This laptop, a compaq presario v6133 (from the v6000 line) has the nice 'feature' of a non-working fan sensor / regulator.

The good is that it runs nice & quiet... the bad is that it'll just burn itself out. Guess what part of the mobo dies first? Nope, not the CPU, not the RAM, and not even the northbridge -- it's the good old onboard WIFI adapter.

What might actually save this laptop is an addendum to the (expired) 1 year warranty, declaring free fix & free shipping for this issue as long as it's w/in 2 years. It's declared as an "HP Limited Warranty Service Enhancement".

Otherwise, it's a BIOS update (to fix the fan control, not the damage already caused), and an external card -- or an ebay of the MOBO.

It's pretty sad, actually -- it's rare that someone drops off their PC that's fully virus and malware protected, with proper restore points & generally in perfect working order.

Wow... it's been a while since I've updated this blog.

Today's topic is one that took me a while to get to... not to writing, but to actually implementing. More to the point, it took me an eternity to

be convinced that a) vms for doing work (even for yourself) at home is a Good Thing (tm), b) is not just good, but essential, and c) vmware is a

better product and easier to use than MS Virtual Server and Virtual PC.

Some things it takes me a while to get drilled into my head on -- these are the lessons that are hard learned. I say this as I just exit my own webform post editor in favor of writing my posts in notepad... this is something I constantly harp on my wife for as something you just should not do. Who wants to rewrite a 3 page textbox entry after they've already typed it!

That was actually a poor segue, but it at least serves to illustrate my point... avoid getting burned.

I'm a developer. I like cutting edge stuff.

Those two statements together? Beta Testing for the win.

Over the years (well, since I tricked my way into the win '98 beta back in high school), I've tried countless software that was close-to-but-not-quite ready for prime-time. I've lived without a functional dvd player, lived without sound. Lived without being able to display anything on screen (well... except for BIOS), and headed into it face-first. (Till Windows Home Server!)

With my development environment, I've learned that VMWare is the best way to allow me to try out whatever betas I want on my host OS (currently running Win7 with nary an issue, now that I've told it to ignore the fact that the 64bit drivers are unsigned, and got my hands on some beta drivers for other cards). All I have to do is use some snapshots in VMWare Workstation, and I can revert back in the dev environment to stable points! Now I can have my nightly builds of resharper 4.5, and roll back if I hosed my working environment! Add to this the fact that I can share my USB devices, and now I can synch my iPod when I'm out of the state. (I can also have the VMs net connection go through my cell phone... really cool if I'm on the road)

The other cool things are being able to use Unity to have virtual applications running side-by-side with host windows, and being able to have my native 2560x1600 resolution OS on a virtual machine. For $189 this is invaluable, even though it's a steep price to begin with.

Working on trying to repair a friend's PC, I've encountered a hard drive so toasted, the file system is unrecognizable. The funny thing is that there's actually no "click of death" coming from the disk, but even a FIXMBR failed to recognize the old school FAT file system ("unrecoverable errors", file names that are all smiley faces (!), and my personal favorite, the reporting of the size as "10,XXX kilobytes" -- ouch!).

So I'm installing a fresh OS on the machine and giving it back as a pristine machine.... sans all saved data, documents, personal information, and settings.

Makes me feel a bit defeated....