Hi, I'm Erica Douglass. I sold my business and "temporarily retired" at age 26. I write here about investing, setting goals, and entrepreneurship. Most importantly, I share lessons I have learned that can help you on your quest for financial freedom!
Get started by reading my latest blog post, or browsing my favorite blog posts.
Shuttle update
YAY!!!!
I finally got my system working.
After I wrote that blog post, I used nLite to set up a slipstream of XP 32-bit with the correct nVidia SATA drivers. I then reformatted the system, partitioned as I really wanted (3 partitions: C: 30GB for program files and Windows; D: 174GB for music and movies; E: 30GB for personal files.) I partition this way so I can always reformat without having to back up all my music and personal files.
Anyway, I got Windows installed and then realized I had neglected to slipstream either the nVidia video driver or the Ethernet driver. Hmm. I grabbed the SD card out of my Treo and dropped it into my laptop, then grabbed the latest nVidia drivers from this link (which is what I was following to slipstream the drivers in the first place.) I downloaded to the card, put the card in my desktop (yeah, every computer I own has a SD card reader) and installed the drivers. Then I rebooted…and promptly freaked out.
The system wasn’t booting. It just sat there and blinky-cursored at me (after I ignored the prompt to boot from CD.) “Fuck…another reformat!” I thought to myself. I popped in the Windows CD. It booted into the setup options and I realized it was seeing my SD card as a potential destination for my Windows install. “I wonder if it’s trying to boot off the SD card,” I mused. I popped the card out, rebooted, and sure enough, Windows came back up. Stupid computer! (Side note: When I have my backup drive plugged in via USB, it tries to boot off that, too. Sigh.)
Anyway, after installing 51 Windows updates (please note I had slipstreamed SP2 onto my CD, so this is 51 updates after SP2), some more drivers, and rebooting a few more times, I had a working system. So far, so good. I’m now copying all my music files off my backup drive. I had all my CDs ripped into MP3, but they don’t all fit on my iPod, so I had them stored on the backup drive. It’s been 6 months since I’ve been able to easily access my backed-up MP3s. They’re copying over to this system now. It’s nice to have them back!
Also, iTunes works now, so either it was a corrupt download problem or it didn’t work under Windows x64 with my system.
All good for now. If the system has any more problems, I will post annother update.
Like this entry? Subscribe to this blog and receive an email update whenever a new post appears on the site! No spam, and I won't give your email address to any other company.
Email This Post To A Friend
Bookmark in Del.icio.us
|
Technorati
|
Digg This!
|
Review on StumbleUpon
Previous post in this category: Windows XP 64-bit + Shuttle SN26P + Nvidia Nforce4 … it all SUCKS.
5 Responses to “Shuttle update”
Leave a Reply
My experience says; if you don’t genuinely need really large memory footprints, terrabyte partitions, or support for really really big numbers, don’t use 64-bit. The processor won’t clock any faster on anything that uses only 32-bit facilities.
If you haven’t already, make sure all the firmware is updated on everything, and the various bios/whatever menus are tweaked just enough to enable/disable anything in an unhelpful default state.
Those noisy fans on the power supply, etc. can be replaced pretty easily if you can find a quieter one with similar air flow. Halted Specialties [HSC] has oodles of fans of different types. It could be surprisingly cheap and easy to replace a noisy one, though you’d have to identify the existing fan first. HSC is awesome!
HSC?
Are you kidding? You;ll probably be buying the broken fans that she “parted-out” from her original system.
Exactly where did you think they get all that junk at HSC so cheap?
Hi; I have an Nforce 3 w/fn85 mb, cannot find nvidia drivers that work audio. I use a wave editor to tranfer lp’s to wave files & clean them up but like you I am stymied by 64 bit that doesn’t work w/nothing and lack of driver support
So you gave up on XP64?
XP may be my last MS product. I’m soooooo over troubleshooting and tweaking. It used to be fun, but after 15 years of Microsoft “fun” - I’m about over it.
I was thinking of getting one of these (maybe 2) now that NewEgg is offering them with the 7950 (barebones)for $500.
I’ve read lots of forums where the Linux/BSD folks love these things, smooth installs, few problems. My last experience with Linux (RedHat) left me with a lot of mental issues, post offices shot up, etc…
As to some of your other troubles - I’ve had similar issues.
Resetting the bios was the problem (in my case) - any detected USB device (after reset) became a potential “floppy” (bootable device) since I hadn’t specified things in bios again, like I did after purchase.
I just turned off “boot from other devices”, switched boot sequence, and was back in “reinstall” business.
I also just noted that Shuttle posted it’s Vista Premium capable PC’s - and only their latest models are listed there (DDR2 based boxes).
I suspect a lot of folks are going to be in for a shock when they think that the ‘Big Box Store’ that sold them their X64 capable PC way back when - you know, for ‘confidence in future-proofing’, is not going to happen… smoothly, lol…
Every OS forum I’ve visited tho, has something going on, rendering item x problematic with item y… The nature of the beast, I ’spoze.