Archive for the ‘Windows’ Category

Thanks to one of my students in class, I was given a Windows 2008 server beta DVD for testing. The ‘core’ installation rumour is true; there is one extra installation mode available with just a command prompt and a plain blank desktop.

Installation process is really simple, just a few clicks (literally) and it’s done. Well, the process is so simple, people won’t even be given a chance to specify user name and password — one have to figure out that in order to login, one should enter user name ‘administrator’ without any password.

But then, doing administration with terminal isn’t a simple thing. Luckily there is a step-by-step guide available from TechNet blog. It provides tutorial on each and every command needed for server maintenance, including setting administrator password (grin), network setup, etc. Time for command learning, urgh.

Actually most administration can be done remotely, but I can’t. The problem is, no VMWare network driver is available, so there is no networking. The only way to share file is through USB thumbdrive, and that is troublesome. I definitely don’t want to risk rendering my harddisk unusable by installing directly.

Some more screenshots before and after installation:

The plain blue desktop with terminal reminds me of X Windows + XTerm during the old Slackware days. But indeed at that time Slackware is way more stupid — the only available action after closing XTerm is to press Ctrl-Alt-Backspace. Not to mention, one can run any GUI program after invoking Task Manager, though that’s a bit clumsy…

The documentation (on web) about needed harddisk space for installation is quite wrong however; actually a full installation needs 7GB, whilst core installation takes 3GB of space.

Haven’t investigated any service yet (because there is no networking). But what I really need is its Recycle Bin format; for this purpose alone, I’ve got satisfactory result. The Recycle Bin format is the same as Vista one, nothing changed. That means no change is necessary for my rewritten rifiuti to read 2008 Recycle Bin, yeppee!

昨天才有機會接觸到 Vista，終於可以一看它的 Recycle Bin 是甚麼樣子（近來一直在研究這個課題）。

雖然結構上是改了一些地方，例如 C:\RECYCLER 變成 C:\$Recycle.Bin，檔案的 indexing 方法也變了，以往的 INFO2 （記載所有移入 Recycle bin 的檔案的資料）拆開變成每個檔案自己都有一個獨立的 index；但分析倒是比以往容易了，它的 binary format 很易拆解。我先放置了一個 sample 的 PDF 文件在自已的站裏面，遲些做進一步的分析（雖然感覺上能分析的東西好像不太多）。

As there is no copy of Ghost around, I was unable to move my Windows 2000 to new harddisk for a short while. After Bunny’s suggestion, I give ntfsclone a try. It only claims to be able to move NTFS partition, nothing more. Not even fixing boot record.

Probably I’m lucky, since after cloning a damaged NTFS partition (with lots of bad sector), Windows still manage to boot! Most likely because of my habit of always installing Windows on the very first partition of every disk, thus the boot record of cloned partition fits completely on the new disk. The bad sectors have been biting me in the past (damaging an important DLL and render the Windows partition unbootable), so it is still unsafe to say I have a fully usable Windows again. Still, perhaps time for a reinstall, but at least there is a plan B.

2007-07-02 update: Finally, I have spent a whole night re-installing Windows. The bad sectors have damaged some not-so-critical yet still essential files (shellext, java stuff, …) . Under that state some applications can’t be installed, basically leaving me a broken system.

Most Chinese Windows users should have heard about CP950, which is the implementation of Big5 character mapping inside traditional Chinese Windows. However, what the heck is CP951? Is it somehow related to CP950? Yes! This code page exists, but is rarely mentioned in internet, and I didn’t manage to find any page that clearly documents it so far; not even inside M$’s web site.

Now most of the content is moved to another static page, since it deserves some research value. Visit that page for more detail.

Why is it so difficult to have a partition table usable under both Linux and Windows? While Windows reports correct CHS values, it is so fragile when handling partition tables with errors. Partition Magic can be useful sometimes, but for me it usually just refuse to start. Damn it.

It is not much better in Linux. It is always assumed there are 255 heads, while the correct number for my harddisk is 240. Besides fdisk simply won’t allow me to grow extended partition. Finally it is cfdisk that saved my life, otherwise I may need to waste many hours/days for merely moving partitions around without achieving anything useful.

For such administrative issues, I’m just a simple user that wish to have things that Just Work™.