BSOD during Vista x64 Boot Process

I recently upgraded to 4GB of RAM, but my 32-bit Vista OS only detects 3.25GB since my graphics card is taking a considerable amount of address space; in fact, all 32-bit Windows can and will only detect that same amount.

Having some capable hardware, I wanted to give Vista x64 a try on my machine. The installation process was OK until it restarted for the first time. I was greeted with a BSOD and the installation halted. I reset the computer and tried resuming the installation and it went to the final stage. But, again when it restarted, the BSOD came up again during the boot process (while the Vista progress bar is moving).


I tried testing my RAM which took pretty long. But, it was no use. There was no problem with my RAM, yet the boot process wouldn't go pass the BSOD. I had no choice but to reinstall back the 32-bit version. I was pretty much disappointed since my Vista x64 saga ended up with only painful fingertips from removing and reinstalling the RAM modules.

I found out on the next day that it was Microsoft fault in Vista x64 that caused this problem. This KB article from Microsoft states that if any of the options below are true:

• The computer uses more than 3 GB of RAM.
  
• The computer uses a storage system that is running the Storport miniport driver.
  
• The computer uses a controller that uses 32-bit direct memory access (DMA).
  

The problem was that I was installing Vista x64 on a machine with 4GB RAM. So, I solved it by removing 2GB of RAM and installing the OS with 2GB. When it was up (yes, the installation finished without any problem), I installed this fix which ridiculously requires validation (I don't have problem with validation but I can't be bothered by it when I am in trouble). After the fix, I installed back the 2GB and I didn't see any BSOD now, at least until now.

What's the difference between 32-bit and 64-bit? So far I see no difference with the only exception that the 64-bit version can detect all my physical RAM. And the 64-bit version consumes more RAM than its 32-bit counterpart since it keeps both 32-bit and 64-bit versions of DLL in memory.

Technorati Tag: Vista x64

Bookmarks and Back Up

Anyone who surfs the web realizes how important bookmarks (or favorites in IE terms) are, in saving her time and energy.

They free you from having to type the full address (instead just a click is all what you need) and they free you from having to remember the address or even the title of the site and they help you make sense of themselves by giving you a way to organize them. In Firefox particularly, you can remember the bookmarks by their keywords; for instance, you can just type gm for Gmail.

When something becomes essential in your life, you become afraid of losing them and find ways to keep them in safe places. There are many services that want to help you do that: Google Bookmark, Delicious, Foxmarks are very good sites to keep them so that they are accessible anywhere anytime.

For a regular Firefox user, Delicious doesn't help much; you can't have an easy and fast way to access your bookmarks. Google Bookmarks lacks a good organization scheme: you give two labels to a bookmark and it appears in two places, and there is completely no hierarchical ordering at all (a byproduct of Google's sacred Label system which, while many people dislike it, Google still insists on using).

Foxmarks is a good tool for a Firefox user. It synchronizes the local bookmarks with a server, so all your bookmarks are available at the Firefox Bookmark toolbar and also online on the web (www.foxmarks.com).

I made a mistake by trusting one service (Foxmarks) completely. My Firefox crashed once and due to some reason I don't know, all local bookmarks are gone and Foxmarks intelligently synced its server with my empty list of bookmarks. (I was wondering why it was not the other way or why it didn't ask me at all.) As a result, I have lost all the bookmarks that I have painstakingly collected over the years.

I rebuilt my bookmarks as far as I can recall from my memory and redid the keywords for my Firefox. Now I reinstalled my Windows and before wiping out my old Windows, I made sure the bookmarks were synced with the server. When I got to the new Windows and tried to download the bookmarks back to my local store, I was greeted with an error and when I visited the website, it showed me this:


I was so disappointed with a service that I trusted for so long, yet I have no other better service to resort to.

A question I am now asking myself: should I rebuilt the bookmarks and backup them from Firefox to a file and keep it on my HDD? I can occasionally upload the backed up file to my server so that I have a more recent copy in case I lost the file on my computer. I would have a better control over my bookmarks and how often they are backed up at the expense of extra time and effort. But, now it seems these extra effort and time are worth the while and it may probably lead me to a habit of backing up my files more frequently or even to doing RAID 1 (mirroring) for my data disks.

Have I been so naive and lazy to have trusted an automated service (that has no guarantee that it will work when I need it most)? Have I been forgetting the old good way of doing the backup myself and taking control of the entire process myself (of course with extra effort and time)?

Anyway, having lost my entire bookmark collection and now being cut off from the newly created bookmarks for many hours have taught me a good lesson on Back Up. I'd rather not trust fully those online services that "assure" me an ease of mind by helping me back up my stuffs. I will most likely continue to use them as usual but I will from now on start a habit of having a back up copy myself that I can see and reach at very easily.

If you have a good suggestion on Firefox bookmarks synchronization, please let me know and I will be very grateful.

Technorati Tag: Bookmarks

Colorful Labels in Gmail

Google wants your Gmail to be colorful. Just a few days ago, Google added colorful smiley to Gmail Chat. Now Google again added a new feature to make your label world colorful. As usual, this new feature is only available in the new Gmail which only works with IE7 and Firefox2 yet.

The pace at which Google added new features into the new Gmail is amazing if you think about how long the old Gmail has been running with very few new features. If you think the new features currently available are not many yet, wait until some time later when Google announces the hierarchical labeling. (I just can't wait until that day. I have too many labels and an hierarchy is the best way to clean them up.)

{Official Announcement}

Technorati Tag: Gmail

OpenID Commenting in Blogger Draft

Blogger Draft has added OpenID commenting for BlogSpot. Now if someone is using LiveJournal or Wordpress, she is allowed to comment using her identity from these publishing services.

Technorati Tag: Blogger

Google Map Will Now Detect Your Location

Google Map for the mobile phone now has a new feature called My Location where Google Map will try to detect your location using your mobile tower location when you press "zero" on your phone. It works on phones with or without GPS, but Google says that the approximation can be as much as 1000m and it may sometimes not work (it means John will sometimes faint during the beta testing; watch video below for more info).

When you activate My Location, you will see a blue dot on the map showing the approximate location of you and all you need is type what you want and get the direction there from your current location. It does save you time when you need to find direction to somewhere and you don't know where you are now.

Technorati Tag: Google Map

Colorful Emoticons in Gmail Chat

Gmail chat now has colorful emoticons and group chat like in Google Talk Gadget. These features are only available in the new version of Gmail though. That's because the new features require the new JavaScript and modularity of the new version of Gmail.

If you are still in old version of Gmail or are using Chat Client, you cannot be invited to a group chat session.

It's interesting why there has been no update to the Desktop client version of Google Talk. It has been stationary for quite a long time. But, it's true that the Chat Client is a pretty mature application itself.

Offical Post: Gmail Blog

Technorati Tag: Gtalk

Vista Freezessssss....

Does anyone have any problem with Vista freezing for no reason with the HDD access led being busy? Apparently, there was no read or write to the HDD recorded when I check the log after Vista got out of the intermittent freeze. When it freezes, it does so for about 15 to 30 seconds; when it comes back, it is as though nothing had happened and everything works smoothly, with no CPU surge or HDD access detected.

Also, the freeze does not occur so frequently; it comes once in a while but it is very annoying.

There have been much talking about the problem but so far I have seen no clear solution or fix for it yet. If you know why, please leave your comment...

By the way, the score for my main computer is here. As you can see, it can't be due to low spec.

Thanks.

Technorati Tag: Vista

Breakthrough for Stem Cell Research

Scientists from Japan and Wisconsin have reported that they could now create pluripotent stem cells without having to destroy an embryo. They re-engineered the skin cells by introducing four genes to reverse the skin cells to go back to pluripotent state where they can develop into any of the various cells of the body—heart, bone, blood, nerve or even skin itself.

The reprogrammed skin cells may yet prove to have subtle differences from embryonic stem cells that come directly from human embryos, and the new method includes potentially risky steps, like introducing a cancer gene. But stem cell researchers say they are confident that it will not take long to perfect the method and that today’s drawbacks will prove to be temporary.

This is a great news for the Stem Cell research field and there have been so many hopes that such a day will finally arrive. When the scientists can perfect the new procedure to get stem cells, there will be a huge increase in the government fundings for the stem cell projects which by far have been so limited by the budget and the legal and ethical issues.

Technorati Tag: Stem Cell

MS Error Rerport Won't Care Google Desktop

Just found out that Vista Error Report had automatically put Google Desktop entries under "Block List" and won't allow me to remove these entries. I remember I never did that. Weird!

Technorati Tag: Vista

New iGoogle Themes Relased

iGoogle now has five more themes to decorate your Google Homepage. Google didn't make it explicitly known on the page though. But they are in the list when you choose Select Theme on your page.


My favorite is Autumn :) The raccoons are busy cleaning up the leaves.

Will there be any easter egg in these five new themes as well?

Justin

Technorati Tag: iGoogle

IMAP for Gmail

Gmail will start to support IMAP, a better option than POP3, for the iPhone. Although it's advertised for iPhone, you can enable IMAP in your Gmail and use any mail client that support IMAP. If you are a hard-core desktop mail client user who has been using Gmail with POP3, it's now time to make some changes to use IMAP. Nothing much will change but you'll notice some performance improvement though.

Justin

PS: I don't see IMAP option in my Gmail yet.

Technorati Tag: Gmail, IMAP

Windows Live Listas

Windows Live Labs released a list sharing service, named Listas. You can create any list—to do, shopping, meeting agenda—and keep them private, share with your friends or put it on the community.


Alone, it doesn't seem very powerful, considering the overhead of having to visit its own dedicated web site and create lists there. But, if Microsoft finds a way to integrate it into other services and products, Listas could prove a very useful tool, for instance, brain-storming through email.

Justin

Technorati Tag: Listas

Google Desktop 5.5 Beta Released

Google released a new Beta of Google Desktop (5.5) with some improvements. The first and most obvious feature is to allow you to add the Google Desktop gadgets onto your iGoogle homepage in the expense of slow loading time for your iGoogle. I don't know why I should add the desktop gadgets like Music Player onto my iGoogle (so that I can play my music from an internet cafe?)

The second improvement seems necessary: it now allows you to add more than one instance of a gadget, so now you can have two weather gadgets (if you have plenty of screen estate) for two locations instead of having to toggle between the two locations in one gadget.


The third new feature is the re-designed quick search box which is highly inspired by Vista. It doesn't make any difference whatsoever though.

Justin

Technorati Tag: Google Desktop

Google Image Search for High Resolution Images

Google Image Search now includes an option to select only the very high resolution images. The parameter for imgsz to search for Extra Large Images (as Google calls this option) is huge as compared to xxlarge which was the largest image size option.


In the screen shot above, you can see the search results contain images of really huge resolutions.

Justin

Technorati Tag: Search

Office Live Workspace

You can now pre-register for Microsoft Office Live Workspace where you can store Microsoft Office files. As shown on the web page, the number of files is virtually not limited (1000+). You can also share you files and edit them online too.

This is gonna be a great move by Microsoft to fight Google's Docs Suite which recently released a Presentation tool which didn't cause much hype on the net, being a rudimentary and indifferent.

Until then...

Justin

Technorati Tag: Microsoft Office

What Time Is It Now?

Type "Time your location" into Google Search and you will get the current time of that place. For example, if you wanna know what time it is now in Singapore, type Time Singapore and you will see an analog clock showing the current time with a verbose display on its right side.

A related query is asking Google about the weather of a location by typing "Weather your location" as in Weather Singapore.

Technorati Tag: Google Search

Windows Live Translator

Microsoft is testing Live Translator which can be accessed through: translate.live.com or translator.live.com. The interface is clean and maintain the consistent looks of Windows Live services—Live Spaces and Live Mail, for example. (Side note: I hate that looks! It doesn't make sense to put a large banner above the Windows Live navigation bar. The banner takes a lot of space and it doesn't serve the users. Something without a use should disappear; it does in evolution though.)

Below I did a simple translation and compared the results with those from Google Translate. It seems like Google's translation is better but to confirm it needs a lot more testings of course.

1) How are you, without ?



2) How are you?



Until then...

Justin

Technorati Tag: Live Translator

Last Week on Google Reader

Google Reader, the most powerful feed-reader, also got the most important update. For quite some time after graduating from Google Labs, the Reader remained the strange Google Application without the famous Google Search! Now, there is a search box at the top of the page and you can now search all the feed items or the posts inside a feed.

The search is very good but it is the slowest search provided by Google. Sooner or later, Google will hopefully improve the performance of Google Reader Search.

As you can see from the screen shot above, the Google Reader icon has not detached the Google Lab icon yet. But, they removed the lab icon from the "Loading" message.

The Reader also got a minor update: it can now count toward 1000. Before that, it only show 100+ for any feed with more than 99 unread items. I think 1000 should be very enough for feed item count since any number larger than that will not be useful to the user anymore.

Until then...

Justin

Technorati Tag: Google Reader

Last Week on iGoogle

Last week, the iGoogle homepage got some updates too. There is now a way to change the column layout of the homepage into 2 columns, 3 columns with variable widths. In fact, Google should have realized that some iGoogle gadgets would benefit from more space than the then-default width of the 3 column layout. Anyway, I'm glad now that I'm able to have a column with a bigger width for my news and search gadgets. :)


Another update to the iGoogle is the ability to share a certain tab with other users. The state of the tab—the page layout and content—will be the same as when the owner generated the share link. After that, anyone who adds the tab using the link will not see any update of the tab even if the owner changes it.

To change the width or to share the tab, all you need to do is to click on the arrow icon on the tab and select the corresponding link.

Until then...

Justin

Technorati Tag: iGoogle

Last Week on Google Docs & Presentation

Google has been behind the schedule for the launch of the Google Presentation tool which is strongly needed to be a part of the Google Docs Suite. After Google allowed Slideshow Preview in Gmail for Microsoft PowerPoint files, there had been many speculations as to when the tool will be released. Although Ionut predicted that Google could release it last week, there was no sign and news of it. While Zoho, an online office suite, has long been offering a presentation tool, it's surprising to see why Google have such delays to release the product.


There was a little but very good update on Google Spreadsheet though. Now it is very easy to let the Spreadsheet to autofill the cells based on the first three data that you entered. For example, if you type "Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday" and select the three cells and drag the small blue square to the range of cells that you want the Spreadsheet to autofill, Google Spreadsheet will fill in the rest of the days of the week.

In the above test, I provided the first three rows for the first three columns and the first six rows for Fibonacci series but Google Spreadsheet doesn't seem to recognize it. Nonetheless, it is a very cool and nice tool for Google Spreadsheet and will prove very useful to me who uses it a lot.

Until then...

Justin

Technorati Tag: Google Docs