I’m happy to say I have located a fix online for this bug. It’s an easy fix:

• Hit ALT+F2  or use terminal and type in the following:
  gksudo gedit /usr/lib/nspluginwrapper/i386/linux/npviewer
• add the following line BEFORE the last line of text:
  export GDK_NATIVE_WINDOWS=1
• Save.
• Restart any applications using flash (ie. Firefox)

[Source: ubuntuforums.org]

Officially Windows 7 hasn’t supported upgrading Beta and RC builds but that hasn’t stopped people from doing it anyway. Now that Windows 7 is released to RTM, and was published to TechNet and MSDN yesterday, millions of users around the globe are starting the migration to this latest and highly anticipated iteration of Windows. Officially Microsoft says you will need to reformat your drive and start from scratch, using Windows Easy Transfer to migrate to a new version of Windows 7 (official guide here). However, some users may not want to reinstall their old programs even though Windows Easy Transfer is said to migrate your settings for these programs.

I’ve created this simple guide on how to upgrade Window 7 RC to the RTM build without using Windows Easy Transfer, but rather the upgrade option that is normally not available in this scenario.

Step 1: Just to be safe, you will probably want to back up your data (but you already knew that).

Step 2: Download the desired Windows 7 RTM ISO or have your upgrade disc handy. Make sure this is the same architecture as your current install as you cannot go from 32-bit to 64-bit, or vice-versa. You must upgrade to the same version.

Step 3: Mount the ISO using something like Daemon Tools, or extract it with your favorite ISO extracting tool (WinRAR, for example). Or, if you have the upgrade disc, make sure it’s in the drive.

Step 4: Open up the disc so you can see all the contents of it. In Computer, you will need to right click and select “Open” to avoid opening Autoplay instead.

Step 5: Copy all the contents of the disk (all files) to a new folder somewhere on your computer. I copied everything to a 4GB flash drive I have because I am upgrading multiple PCs.

Step 6: Open your new folder (or flash drive) with the contents you copied over from the Windows 7 install disc, and navigate to the Sources directory, and look for a file called cversion.ini.

Step 7: Open the file so you can edit  it (I use WordPad). Make the following change:

[HostBuild]
MinClient=7233.0
MinServer=7100.0

Change it to:

[HostBuild]
MinClient=7000.0
MinServer=7100.0

Step 8: You’re done! You can run setup.exe directly from the folder without loading it on any media. Setup copies the files on to a temporary folder on your hard drive so it can complete the upgrade. Or if you have media or a USB drive,  burn or copy the contents of the folder to the disc/media and run setup.exe directly from it.

Setup will now give you the option to upgrade your existing installation.

First we have Google Docs in 2007,

Then Google Chrome and Google Android OS in 2008,

and now Chrome OS in 2009.

Slowly Google is continually positioning itself as a bigger thorn in the side of Microsoft (and Apple soon) than ever before. My speculation is that a desktop/laptop OS is next. But who gets hurt more from this, is it Apple or Microsoft? While Apple’s marketing is laser-focused as the alternative to the PC, where does Chrome OS lie? My speculation is that a desktop/laptop Chrome OS will steal market share from Apple as another alternative to Windows. In the netbook arena, however, Windows XP and Windows 7 Starter will have a new competitor. Sure, Linux has had its challenges in the netbook market, but this one is Google branded…

Why netbooks? Well, that’s easy. All netbooks have the same basic specs: Atom processors, Intel GMA, etc. Like Apple’s OS X, it’s a simpler kernel than having to support multiple OEMS, specs, etc (which is what Windows needs to do natively).

I must say that I’m surprised though it’s called Chrome OS and not Android or something else. I would have figured an Android netbook version would have been their offering.

Let’s see how many OEMs alter course after gearing up for the Windows 7 RTM. I suspect we will see Chrome versions of popular netbook offerings.

With Google becoming increasingly powerful (and arguably, Microsoft-like), will their “don’t be evil” internal company mantra hold up? We’ll just have to find out.

PS – As the well-known user-friendly Linux distro, I wonder how Canonical (Ubuntu) feels.

Download links here:

32-bit (x86) download
64-bit (x64) download

More to come!

UPDATE: Looks like this issue isn’t only related to AVG.

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This article is concerning though. I’ve had 4x 750GB 7200.11 in a RAID 5 in my NAS since June. When I first bought the parts to build the system, 2 of the drives came DOA. Newegg quickly replaced them and I’ve been fine since. No weird clicking anymore but this makes me think I should consider running RAID 6 dual parity incase two drives fail at once. Having all the build dates nearly the same is worrysome. Even with rock solid linux RAID I won’t be able to sustain two drive failures.

As the race is on its final days, things are starting to heat up for Mitsubishi – literally – on the Atacama Desert. Due to technical problems they are unable to finish stage 12, giving them a 6th place in the stage. In finishing they would have received a 3rd place ranking, moving up in the overall race ranking. Here’s an excerpt from Mitsubishi-dakar.com:

The crew Nani Roma and Lucas Cruz of the Repsol Mitsubishi Ralliart team did not succeed in passing the white dunes of the Atacama Desert. The Spanish duo was stuck halfway through the stage while they were still in the middle of the mountains of sand.

An as yet unidentified technical problem prevented them from being able to finish stage 12, where they would have held 3rd place after the driver Carlos Sainz (VW) dropped out.

The Dakar is a difficult cross-country rally and nothing has been won until the finishing line of the last stage has been crossed. All the competitors know this very well, and nobody makes any predictions before that last important day.

What do you think? Can Mitsubishi pull off a win?

Kaspersky Lab releases technical preview of Kaspersky Anti-Virus for Windows 7

After installing it seemed like it was working OK, but after a while it would generate a BSOD with the error pointing to kl1.sys. A quick Google search revealed that this file belongs to Kaspersky AV. I uninstalled it, installed AVG Free and I’ve been error-free since.

Now Windows 7 is running completely stable and fast. For being a beta release it runs pretty much like an RC, except for the recent MP3 corruption hotfixed they pushed out yesterday. Great job so far, Microsoft.

After much anticipation from the tech community, last weekend Microsoft released Window 7 Beta to the public – initially with a 2.5 million download limit (which was removed today). Being the geek that I am, I decided to download and install it and see if the next iteration of Windows lives up to the hype. I was delighted to know that the beta ISO was available on TechNet, which I am a proud (and paid) an member of. Not having to deal with the public download frenzy, I painlessly downloaded the 3+ GB Windows 7 64-bit ISO and began the install process. Here’s my breif review and initial impression of the OS. I will be going in to more detail in future posts.

Installation

The installation process is nearly identical to Windows Vista with a similar look, feel and disk options. The second phase of the install (after reboot) is more user friendly and does a better job of putting things in layman’s terms. After what seemed like 20 – 30 minutes, Windows 7 was intalled and ready for customization and investigation. I had to manally load drivers for my Marvell Yukon on-board gigabit NIC and Intel P35 chipset as Windows 7 did not automatically install them. While I was able to locate these in the driver respository in the OS, I beleive it skipped installing them because they were 32-bit versions. With a quick visit to the Marvell and Intel websites on another PC, I was up and running with compatible ones. Pretty smooth to me.

To better understand my review, here are my system specs:

Intel Q6600 Quad Core – Overclocked to 3.0Ghz (Zalman 9700 fan)
OCZ Reaper 2x 2GB Cas 4
Abit IP35-E Motherboard (cheap $50 refurb while I wait for better ones to get cheaper)
Western Digital 500GB (C:)
Maxtor 500GB (Partitioned for D:, Linux, and Windows 7)
nVidia GTX 260 896MB Video Card
Main OS: Windows Vista Enterprise SP1 - 64-bit

Look, Feel, and Initial Impressions

The OS seems “snappier” than Vista. The look and feel, while similar to Vista, has been updated in the right areas. The interface design is similar to Internet Explorer 8 with less bevels and more minimalist styling. Windows 7′s version of Aero is undeniably appealing and gorgeous. The window drawing reminds me of Ubuntu 8.04 with Compiz where the windows sort of fold out to the desktop. Just like Vista, the default theme is very blue and almost relaxing. The updated windows sidebar is not much of a sidebar anymore as gadgets can live anywhere on the screen now but they remain “sticky” to the sides of the desktop. Much needed improvement. Another favorite feature is the new task bar. I love how the IE 8 icon in the quick launch bar shows a progress bar if you have an active download. Great feature and integration with the OS. This eye candy combined with the upgraded horsepower of Windows 7 should turn out to be the best OS ever from Microsoft. Let’s get in to more detail.

Speed and Stability

Initially the OS was extremely slow. Windows took forever to draw, caused by a low performance WDDM default driver being installed at install. A visit to nVidia’s website instructed me to grab the latest driver on Windows Update.  Runing Windows Update resulted in the driver being updated to a “nVidia prerelease” driver. Once I updated the driver and rebooted, I was good to go.

The OS “seems” faster. It seems to respond more quickly to file transfers and opening up Windows. I didn’t really dive deep in to the OS, but I did notice the performance rating tool is different and more detailed. My score was very low due to my hard drive performance. This is the same issue I have in Vista. However, the Window 7 score may be lower overall as technology is advancing and I don’t have the latest and greatest anymore.

My first order of business was to install and test WoW on it. Since this is what I use my desktop for mostly, it was the easiest performance comparison for me to judge. Once installed, WoW WOTLK ran perfectly and as fast as it does on Vista – that is, until a BSoD (Blue Screen of Death) kicked it in the groin. Looks like nVidia has some work to do making this driver stable for Windows 7. Stay tuned for more updates and testing.

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