WHS hard disk drive fails

I've got a Windows Home Server Version 1 that is based on a DELL PowerEdge SC430 hardware. It has the original 160Gb system disc, a 250Gb data drive and a 500Gb data expansion drive. The latter 500Gb Samsung drive has been 'lost' by the WHS storage manager. I've got replicated, Shared data folders which appear to be alright but the Backup database is not available or repairable. The 500Gb disk is discoverable and the SMART data indicates it is OK.

I have a spare, new 1Tb Samsung drive I could add. I'm not too bothered about losing the backups as all the client PCs are OK and I can re-backup when the server is fixed.

The problem is fixed! I added the 1Tb drive to the data pool and then used the 'Remove' disk option from the Data storage menu to remove all traces of the faulty 500Gb drive. As I expected, all my backups had disappeared but I was able to recreate them from the clients.

I tested the faulty 500Gb which just threw up continous bad blocks so it is being RMAed back to Samsung. Server running smoothly again.

Three cores become four

I managed to unlock the fourth core of my AMD Athlon II X3 445 and still overclock it to 3.42GHz. It is now reported as an AMD Phenom II X4 B45 processor but without the 6Mb of L3 cache.

This makes it an even better processor as it easily breaks the 10,000 PCmark05 barrier and it appears to be even more responsive. Not bad for just £57! I did add an Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro v2 cooling fan and a pair of Corsair 2Gb DDR3 1333MHz memory modules. It is still worth it.

AVG Free Fails with Office 2010 Starter

I've stopped installing AVG Free 2011 with new DELL PCs that come with Microsoft's Office 2010 Starter Edition. This is because AVG gives a false positive on OFFSPON.EXE in the Q: drive which is generated by Microsoft Office 2010 SE. It then puts it in the virus vault which causes Word and Excel to stop working.

A work around is to exclude the Q: drive from the AVG scanning and ID processing but even this is fraught is errors and inconistences. It gives and 'Acccess is denied' message when you select the Q: drive even though it obviously is accessing it and it still does add the drive to the excluded paths anyway. Go figure!

Until they get this fixed and it has been a couple of months already, I will continue to load Microsoft's Security Essentials. Thereby cutting off AVG from any potential revenue from those people who are happy to upgrade to their Internet Security version.

Three is better than two and cheaper than four

I recently bought an AMD Athlon II X3 445 tri-core processor for just £57. An equivalent 3.1GHz Athlon II X2 255 dual core processor was just £11 less at £46 and a quad-core Athlon II X4 6.45 was £37 extra at £94. So the extra core to give an effective 50% performance boost for multi-tasking and multi-processing is just £11. This seems very good value.

I was able to easily over clock it to 3.5Ghz with the stock air cooler and some rather generic DDR3 PC8500 memory. This makes it even better value and the good basis for a gaming system where a quad-core CPU is not necessarily a benefit. It is obviously worth upgrading to an Artic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro fan and some branded performance memory.

Another disappointing nVidia card

With nVidia releasing the mid- and low-end Fermi technology-based 400 series graphics cards, it is an opportunity to pick up the previous generation 200 series cards at a knockdown price. Or so I thought when I saw a Palit GT240 with 512Mb GDDR3 memory for just £45. These cards are retailing in PCworld for £90-100.

I wasn't expecting too much and I just hope that it would be a quiet, low power yet effective graphics card that I could use to upgrade one of my test systems with. It is quiet, you don't need an extra PCI-E power connector for it, but it only seems to run 5,324 3Dmark06 benchmark. And that is DirectX 9 and not 10.1 which is what that card is supposed to be capable of.

So I've decided to keep the nVidia 8500GT in the test system and rebox the GT240 to sell with a DELL 230 mini-tower for about £70.

Damned McAfee

A customer had a fairly new Compaq computer infected with over 700 bits of spyware, scams and viruses. I was able to quickly clean those away with the use of Malwarebytes and the resident McAfee Security Center but it left the network and Internet access disconnected.

Further investigation showed that the integrated network adapter had a 169.254.x.x IP address and that the hosts file had been replaced by a scam one that would have just allowed access to the payment websites. I overwrote the hosts file with the default one but after two hours of endeavours I still couldn't get DHCP to give the adapter a valid IP address.

I tried resting the PCP/IP network stack, clearing DNS caches, etc. I inserted a new PCI Ethernet adapter card, but it still wouldn't work. I then thought about the firewall and noticed that McAfee had its Firewall Lockdown activated. Just press the button and Internet access was immediately restored.

So why do McAfee Firewall Lockdown cause a 169.254.x.x IP address on the network adapter and not tell you when you try to reconnect, reboot or even look at it's status page? Rubbish software and I will continue to not recommend it or install it.

Bad RAM to good RAM

I have a self-built little admin system that I use to check out new system software like the Internet Explorer 9 Beta version that is out at the moment. It is based on an Intel dual-core Celeron E3200 CPU at 2.4GHz and 2x1Gb of PC2-5300 generic memory.

I've always thought that the system could do better if I overclocked it a bit but it wouldn't and I figured that it was the RAM that was the problem. The Asus K5QPL-ASM motherboard I'd used a few times before and it gives easy over clocking profiles in steps up to 20% which is generally sufficient.

So I decided to replace the generic memory (Rendition?) with some standard Crucial PC2-6400 dual stick kit and see what would happen. A significant and noticeable difference in performance was obtained, not just getting the CPU to 2.77Ghz but also the RAM speed started faster at 800MHz and then went up to 928MHz. This meant a much more responsive system.

Worth doing and I'm sure that I'll be able to sell the generic RAM as well. After all ther is basically nothing wrong with it and it'll work fine in an old DELL system. Now I wonder if I'd paid a bit extra for Crucial's Ballistix memory if I'd been able to squeeze a bit more out of this budget system!

Civilisation 5

I pre-ordered the latest Sid Meier's Civilization V (or Civilisation 5) from GAME for just £25. I've been a great fan of this turn-based strategy game for many years and was eager to play the latest graphically intense version.


It arrived a day before the official release date in Europe and frustratingly wouldn't authorise via Steam. I waited until midnight but it still wouldn't work. However the next morning it was fine. Unfortunately, no nice paperback manual with this version just an electronic file, so I've ordered the strategy guide from Amazon for an extra £9.

Having spent many hours this weekend with it, I'm happy to report it was well worth the wait. In fact the gameplay is smoother and more intuitive than previous versions and the addiction levels are even higher. A classic game redone to be even better.

Selling on Ebay

I've been buying and selling on Ebay for a while now. Just a few spare parts, especially CPUs as they are high value and low weight to post. Graphic cards and memory also plus my nephew's fridge that he left behind when he went back to Canada.

I've also been accumulating an increasing number of trade-in PCs that I've replaced wioth new DELLs. I decided it was time to reduce a few by selling them on Ebay. I started with a DELL Dimension 4600 that I'd refurbished starting at jusr £1 for 10 days. It went for just £23 yet others where selling for £52 to £71. Hardly worth my time and effort.

Needless to say I'm trying again with a Dimennsion 3000 for just 3 days. Want to bid on it?

My new laptop

A couple of weeks ago I was ordering a new laptop for a customer of mine. It was the DELL Vostro 3500 which I've been supplying for a while as a good quality, solid professional laptop with fine performance and all the latest technology features.

As I was ordering, I noticed that a slightly better specced version was available for a few pounds extra; the CPU Intel i5-430 was 20% better with 3Gb DDR3 memory (50% better) and a 320Gb 7,200rpm hard disk drive (30% better). Together with Bluetooth and Wireless N connectivity plus fingerprint recognition. As I ordered it DELL offered a second one for just 50% of the first. Great deal, so the price was £292 including VAT and delivery.

I figured that this was a great replacement for my old 5-year old DELL laptop which I should be able to sell for about £100 as it still offers responsive performance with Windows XP and a one and a half hour battery life.

Needless to say my new DELL laptop is superb and I'd recommend it to anyone!

Replaying an old classic game

For my birthday my son bought me the download of one of my all time favourite games Monkey Island 2, Le Chuck's Revenge. This is the recently reworked version with much better graphics, hints and the original developer's commentary.


A real treat to go back over the old island locations such as the cemetery, the voodoo lady in the swamp and the pirates at the dry cleaners! I did need help with some of the puzzles since it was a good few years since I had played the original version.

Really good fun and a welcome change from playing another rework of an old classic game Starcraft 2.

A wonderfully sexy keyboard

I treated myself to a Microsoft Sidewinder X4 gaming keyboard as a belated birthday present. I knew it was going to be different as soon as I started opening the packaging. What emerged was a slim, but weighty keyboard which just sticks to my desktop.

The keys are glossy with white lettering until when you plug it in and then a warm orange glow comes through each key. As a two fingered typist this makes it very easy to see the keys as you type. Also the keys are low profile with a smooth, full travel.

Other functions such as the media keys and the macro keys are useful and work well. It also has a calculator key which I believe is almost essential to any keyboard.

So don't wait, just treat yourself.

My daughter's wedding

The lack of recent posts to this blog is for a real good reason. Just over a week ago my daughter Madelaine got married in a wonderful ceremony.

The venue was Oakley Hall, near Basingstoke and it was just perfect and so was the weather. We could walk from the majestic rooms into the surrounding gardens and chat with our friends and relatives on the large patio. My daughter of course looked stunning in a beautiful dress and I was so proud to give her away to her new husband. The meal and service was good and we had a great band to party us into the night. We stayed in the very comfortable rooms at the hall and then just continued the following day at breakfast. Perfect.

Finished Borderlands

I've finally finished the game Borderlands. It is a great game and it took me a while to finish even with the game guide book. I didn't complete all the possible tasks and I did turn on god mode to kill the end game boss.


However I slowly travelled my way around Pandora and mostly sniped all the skags, bandits, rakks, spiderants and bosses that I found. I liked the caustic weapons the best as they continued to hurt the enemy after the initial shot and the trace gave an idea of their new position. I found a six-shot caustic revolver with telescopic sight which was a great melee weapon.

Now I'm going to try and finish the other game I've been playing for a while Dragon Age: Origins.

Intel Core i3-530

I was impressed by the performance of the new DELL Inspiron 580 desktop with Intel's Core i3-530 2.93GHz CPU and DDR3 memory. It seems to be a quantum step up from the Pentium-based version.

It benchmarks better too; PCmark Vantage 6178 versus 4224 for the older processor. It is just a pity that the price premium is too high. However, I can't wait to try the Intel Core i5-650 which has a faster clock speed with Turbo Boost as well taking it from 3.2GHz to 3.46GHz. So the writing is on the wall for me to upgrade my gaming PC with a new motherboard, CPU and DDR3 memory. Might as well get a new DX11 graphics card too!

Microsoft Office 2010 Starter

I just been delivered my first DELL PC with the new Microsoft Office 2010 Starter instead of Microsoft Works. I was a bit doubtful about a crippled, advertisement displaying version of Microsoft's premier application being any good at all but I was pleasantly surprised. It only has Word and Excel, so no Powerpoint or Outlook but this is hardly a restriction to most users as they typically only need the Powerpoint Viewer and Windows Live Mail can be downloaded and used as a simple email program.

The advertisement strip on the right-hand side is fairly unobtrusive, especially with a wide-screen monitor. And there are few restrictions in Word Starter and Excel Starter for most users. Reviewing changes of Word documents and pivot tables in Excel spreadsheets are the biggest omissions. It also has a neat Office-To-Go feature that allows you to load these applications onto a USB memory stick (about 400Mb) and then use them on another computer to create and edit documents without having to install them. Really neat.

It is a pity that Microsoft is not offering a free down load of Office 2010 Starter and that you can't even buy it in the shops. Also if you purchase the licence upgrade to the full Home and Student or Home and Business versions you only have a single license for that PC and it cannot be transferred. Buying the retail versions is a much better deal.

Old hard disks

A customer complained of a slow DELL Dimension 8400 which intermittently crashed. Performing the usual diagnostics, I determined that the WD 250Gb SATA hard disk drive appeared to be the problem, so I quickly cloned it to a modern Seagate 7200.12 SATA II 320Gb model.

What a difference in the overall system performance! The original disk drive benchmarked at 45Mb/s bandwidth with a 16ms access time whilst the new one gave over 100Mb/s and 6ms respectively. Admittedly the old one was failing and giving the occasional error but I was amazed at the overall performance improvement for just £35 cost. It just shows how much hard disk design, capacity and speed has improved in the last few years.

Dragon Age: Origins

I'm enjoying playing Dragon Age: Origins. I was bought it for Christmas by my son Nick and though at times I've found it frustrating and difficult to progress through, I still keep going back to it for another try. In fact I stopped playing it completely for a while until I completed Bioshock 2, but I've returned to Ferelden to battle the darkspawn.

I've learnt the importance of leveling up, balancing specialisations within your party, equipping the best armour and weapons and just recently to use injury kits to heal your characters. My tactics are still not the best, as some of the attacks are too fast for me to manage and control.

The character dialogues and cut scenes help to vary the battles and the ranges of people and places makes for a refreshing series of quests. I might not be able to finish it, but it is fun so far.

Socket to Intel

What is Intel playing at with all these processor socket formats? For years we just had LGA775 in which a number of CPU ranges, models and revisions fitted into. Upgrading was relatively easy. Just download the latest motherboard BIOS, check power requirements and drop in the new CPU. Job done!

Then we had LGA1156 for top end Intel Core i7 CPUs, and now the LGA1136 for mid range Core i3 and i5 processors. Already limiting the upgrade capabilities. And now I hear that later this year Intel will release the LGA1155 which is slightly different, but completely incompatible with the previous designs. And then later next year LGA2011 (sic!) will be with us. These changes are being made to apparently support even more multi-CPU cores for the future 8, 10, 12 probably.

So in order to upgrade to perform a CPU upgrade we will have to replace the motherboard as well. A lot more expense and hassle. Probably not worth it for most people. And we still have limited software applications that will be able to take advantage of these multi-CPU cores.

One of the advantages of a desktop system is to use its modular architecture to easily upgrade individual components as and when necessary. By limiting the upgrade-ability of their CPUs, Intel has put another nail into the desktop coffin.

Cleaning out Windows Vista

I'm getting more and more problems with Windows Vista. Even though I've converted all my PCs to Windows 7 except one, it seems that my customers are having problems. Windows Vista-based systems sold a couple of years ago (some by me) with only 1Gb of RAM memory are slowing down and even grinding to a halt. The pressures and demands of modern software and broadband technologies have become too much for these limited systems.

Also any virus or spyware scans are taking longer and longer. Normal file cleansing methods have limited success. One major culprit is Vista's Side-by-side Winsxs directory which grows to over 10Gb with tens of thousands of small files. Scanning all these files often takes longer than the rest of the hard disk drive.

Thousands of these files can be removed by either using Vista Service Pack 1's Vsp1cln command or Service Pack 2's Compcln command. These should be run from an Administrator's command line window. It helps a bit. Adding at least another gigabyte of RAM sure helps as well.

Desktop replacements

A lot has been made in the press recently of the decline of the traditional desktop PC and the sales rise of laptops which now outsell desktops. When they mention desktop replacement laptops they generally refer to expensive (£1,000 to £1,500+), large screen, powerful laptops with fast processors and good mobile 3D graphics capabilities. I reckon that there is another desktop replacement market for large screen, value laptops.

This is typified by the DELL Inspiron 17 which even with a dual core mobile CPU, 3Gb of memory, 250Gb hard disk drive and a high resolution 17" screen still comes in at under £500 including VAT and delivery. I am selling these to people who are restricted in space for a full desk-based PC, who are looking for a larger display so that they can see it better and just want to email, web surf and word process, etc. The full-size keyboard also helps these typically older people use their computer.

So we have a new value desktop replacement market.

A traumatic day

Finally, I've transferred operations to my new DELL Vostro 430 and shutdown my trusty Dimension 4550.

It's all to do with decorating! The big desk had to go so that we could paint the rest of the room. The small table can be moved around, so the Dimmension 4550 under the big desk had to be removed and the smaller Vostro 430 could take over email, web browsing, photos and bookkeeping duties.

All the documents, music, photos and favourites were transferred. Emails were a problem as there was no real equivalent to Outlook Express in Windows 7. Hence an Outlook XP database was created on the old system and then imported to Outlook 2003 on the new system and then will be upgraded to Outlook 2010 when it is available later this year. Shame on Microsoft for not creating an easier path to transfer an Outlook Express email database, address book and email account settings directly into the new Windows 7. Anyway it is about time that I upgraded to the real Outlook!

What a difference in performance! Everything is immediately responsive again. Four cores rule!

Old 4550 being retired

My old DELL Dimension 4550 is just about to be retired! I've already received its replacement, a brand new Vostro 430 i5-750 with 3Gb RAM and Windows 7, I'm just waiting for my office to be redecorated and the new desks installed. Yes, I paid Intel's £100 premium for a future-proofed i5-750 processor.

The 4550 was purchased on 25th February 2003 then upgraded to 1Gb RAM and a couple of 160Gb hard disk drives a couple of years ago, but it just doesn't seem responsive any more and multitasking with the old Pentium 4 2.53GHz is not really possible. So the DDR RAM will be used for spares along with everything else in the quirky old case.

I'll be sorry to see it go. Seven years is a long time in computers. Many a character has been typed and many a word read on it.

Return to Rapture

I've just started playing Bioshock 2 which was released this week. it is really great to back to the experiences of one of my favourite games. The wondrous visuals and atmosphere, the music and sounds, the ghostly voices in my head helping me unravel the secrets of the underwater city. I even bought the strategy guide as well to help me make the most of my journey through the splicer infested realms, and more effectively use the traditional weapons plus plasmids that add another dimension to the combat.

I'd been trying Dragon Age Origins which I got at Christmas, but I've been frustrated by being a mage with weak spells, leveling up decisions and the random game play aspects. I'll probably return to this highly rated game after I've enjoyed the delights of Rapture once again.

It is difficult for me to describe to anyone who doesn't play such games the escapism, fantasy experience of being in another imaginary world, interacting and fighting the inhabitants and solving puzzles and exploring the sights and sounds that lead you to the next challenge.

All I can say is that it is good to be back in Rapture!

Wireless N is a WiNNer!

I admit I've been a bit slow in jumping on the Wireless N boat. My excuse is that I was waiting for the draft IEEE 802.11n specification to be ratified. Also to spend upwards of £100 for a router and receiver adapter just to try it out was a bit expensive for me.

So when ebuyer offered a Tenda Wireless N cable router (I'm on Virgin Media cable) for just £15 and an Edimax USB adapter for £13, I could not resist any longer. They were easy to install and though they only offer 150Mbps (actually 135Mbps), this still tripled my bandwidth. It seems to be snappier accessing the Internet and I'm sure the backups to the Windows Home Server will be quicker too. Now if only it had a Gigabit Ethernet switch as well, I'd be really happy.

I'm a Wireless N convert!

Intel's Core iX policy

Now that Intel has released its full range of Core i processors it is interesting to see how and where system vendors are positioning them. For example DELL offers the consumer oriented Inspiron 580, the small business Vostro 430 and the gamer oriented XPS 8100 boxes. All are over £400 in price, leaving the lower ground to the Pentium, Core 2 Duo and Quad CPUs. These are seriously over performed and under priced by the new AMD Athlon II and Phenom II processors which DELL also sell in Inspiron 570 boxes.

So typically there is a £100 premium for buying a Core iX-based system. Granted you do get slightly better performance and a motherboard that should last as long as the venerable Socket 775 ones have. I can only think that once the older Intel CPUs, have gone from stock and the manufacturing has switched over fully to Core iX then the prices will drop considerably. But it seems difficult to recommend buying one at the present time unless you really want the latest technology and are willing to pay for it.

Dual core systems again

I've just upgraded a system from a Pentium 4 3GHz to a 'cheap as chips' Celeron E3200 (see previous posts) and what a difference it has made. Both these CPUs were slightly overclocked by 15% to 3.3GHz and 2.77Ghz respectively. Some preliminary testing showed that the integer performance has gone from 8,017 to 21,179 (Sisoft Sandra Arithmetic), an almost threefold amount.

I view the more general PCmark05 type of benchmark as more representative measurement of a system's responsiveness however. It shows weaknesses and bottlenecks in a systems configuration. Here then the difference was even more amazing from 2,280 to 6,328. Again an almost threefold improvement. Just by changing a CPU to one of the cheapest modern ones available.

I used to think that adding memory to a PC was the easiest and most cost effective way of improving an older system's performance. The computer equivalent of a mid-life upgrade. Though it is still effective upgrade, memory costs have gone up considerably in the last few months and now a cheap dual core CPU upgrade to those Socket 775 systems looks an even more effective alternative.

A cautionary tale

One of my customers gave me his Fujitsu tower that was giving him trouble after I installed his new DELL. It was only a couple of years old and had a reasonable spec. So I thought that by replacing the scruffy old case with a new shiny black one (£16), an a extra stick of 1Gb DDR memory (£23), SATA DVD writer (£18) and a better 400W PSU (£17) should fix the problem and make it resaleable. I was wrong it continued to crash indicating that the strange Fujitsu version of an Asus motherboard (P5SD1-FM2) was the culprit. Interestingly this had been replaced just recently under the extended warranty but was still giving problems. It was an Intel socket 775 with DDR memory which is also a bit rare.

So I replaced it with a cheap Asrock motherboard (£31), and two sticks of 1Gb DDR2 memory (£35). Because the Windows XP installation was keyed to the old Fujitsu BIOS, it needed a new copy of Windows 7 (one of my preordered £45). The Intel Pentium 4 3Ghz CPU was a bit weak but at least the system worked reliably. All was well for a while, but I wasn't able to sell it.

Then another customer gave me an overheating DELL 5150C SFF computer with a passively cooled Radeon X600 graphics card and an Intel Pentium D 3GHz dual core CPU. I removed the graphics card and used the integrated graphics, but it still ran warm due to the powerful and hot CPU. I then decided to swap the CPUs in the two systems. The DELL accepted the single core Pentium 4 CPU without a murmur and was a lot cooler. Then I put the Pentium D onto the Asrock motherboard and mounted a good size Akasa fan (£10) on top to take care of the cooling. It ran for about 10 seconds just booting into Windows and stopped. No lights, no fan, no power and a faint acrid smell of burnt electronics.

I checked the power supply, no problem. So I'd blown the motherboard. Upon checking, the Pentium D 830 was not on the approved CPU list as the motherboards maximum TDP was just 105W. As are most cheap Socket 775 motherboards. Pentium D's are probably the CPUs with the highest TDP ever and are certainly way over 105W! So I have now bought another motherboard and CPU. This time an Asus KP5QPL (£38) and a new Intel Celeron E3200 CPU (£35) to get the computer going again.

My exploits have cost a total £268 and I'd have been better off if I'd have just bought a new, faster DELL with a warranty and be easier to resell. Let this be a lesson to us all that resurrecting an old system is often definitely not worth it.