windows
Booting from a Windows 2003 raid partition
20/04/08 17:31 Filed in: Microsoft
The software raid solutions of Windows 2003 is
designed to only allow access to your mirrored data.
For example you can install the mirrored disk into
another working system to access the folders. It is
not designed to be a bootable recovery solution in
case the primary disk fails. Simply taking the good
working drive and trying to boot from it will fail.
You should be able to boot from a boot disk but not
boot the mirrored drive itself.
The first most likely problem is that the mirrored drive does not have a MBR. This can be fixed using your Windows Server CD and booting to the recovery console. There you can use the FIXMBR command to write a Master Boot Record to your mirrored drive. Using the Recovery Console will also verify if the mirrored drive has a working system as it will show up as a Windows installation and you will be asked for your Windows Admin password to get access to the console.
You also might not have a proper boot.ini file. You can check this using the recovery console's bootcfg command. For me it worked but I would not rely on this in an emergency. I had simply wanted to move my Windows 2003 installation to a bigger disk so I always had a good backup to fall back on. Normally I would use Acronis workstation to clone my drive but for some reason it would just restart (when booting from the CDROM) everytime I tried to clone my Windows Server's dynamic disk partition.
NOTE: If you are tying to simply duplicate your drive, be sure to not break the mirror with both drives connected. If you do so then one of the drives will receive a new drive letter and probably not be able to boot with it. You should always break the mirror with one of the drives already removed.
The first most likely problem is that the mirrored drive does not have a MBR. This can be fixed using your Windows Server CD and booting to the recovery console. There you can use the FIXMBR command to write a Master Boot Record to your mirrored drive. Using the Recovery Console will also verify if the mirrored drive has a working system as it will show up as a Windows installation and you will be asked for your Windows Admin password to get access to the console.
You also might not have a proper boot.ini file. You can check this using the recovery console's bootcfg command. For me it worked but I would not rely on this in an emergency. I had simply wanted to move my Windows 2003 installation to a bigger disk so I always had a good backup to fall back on. Normally I would use Acronis workstation to clone my drive but for some reason it would just restart (when booting from the CDROM) everytime I tried to clone my Windows Server's dynamic disk partition.
NOTE: If you are tying to simply duplicate your drive, be sure to not break the mirror with both drives connected. If you do so then one of the drives will receive a new drive letter and probably not be able to boot with it. You should always break the mirror with one of the drives already removed.
Making Windows and MacOSX Icons
31/10/05 21:36 Filed in: Graphics
If you fall into one of those rare groups of people
needing to make icons for both Windows and MacOSX the
simplest solution I found was using the Axialis Icon Workshop.
Not only can it save to both operating system formats
it also has some nice image object tools to make
fancy buttons really fast and starts at only $35usd.
While it is easy to convert icons between MacOSX/ Windows or to quickly make your own it seems horribly difficult to edit these icons later due to the lack of layer support. So, if you are only looking to make a few icons that cannot later be "tweaked" then this is not bad at $35. The included images also help to make it a very comfortable starter package for icon development.
There's a bunch of other stuff to do batch image conversions, a photoshop plugin, export packages for commercial sale or presentation but those are in the Corporate Edition which is $60usd.
While it is easy to convert icons between MacOSX/ Windows or to quickly make your own it seems horribly difficult to edit these icons later due to the lack of layer support. So, if you are only looking to make a few icons that cannot later be "tweaked" then this is not bad at $35. The included images also help to make it a very comfortable starter package for icon development.
There's a bunch of other stuff to do batch image conversions, a photoshop plugin, export packages for commercial sale or presentation but those are in the Corporate Edition which is $60usd.
Skype is alive and well
12/09/05 20:32
If you have not checked out the latest Skype updates
there are 2 big news worthy items. Number one is that
the latest Windows beta of Skype allows you to
redirect incoming calls to 1 or more phone numbers
when your Skype account is offline. No more fancy
Skype phones!
Number 2 is that Ebay has apparently agreed to buy Skype for $2.6 billion dollars! Reported here and here Wow, I did not realize how powerful ebay had become.
Number 2 is that Ebay has apparently agreed to buy Skype for $2.6 billion dollars! Reported here and here Wow, I did not realize how powerful ebay had become.