Problem with Windows 7 and Esata resolved

In a previous post, I noted that I had my SATA drive controller set as native IDE instead of AHCI. That's the reason why my E-SATA drive wasn't recognised (see yet another post) until I went into device manager and scanned for new hardware. Now that I've set my mainboard SATA controller to AHCI mode, the E-sata drive is seen automatically and it can be ejected (like a USB drive).

Perhaps, this mainboard BIOS setting was at the root of all my previously documented Windows 7 problems? So far, this reinstallation hasn't encountered any problems.

On another note, I forgot again that if a hard drive was formatted with Ubuntu Linux, you have to do an fdisk/mbr (pre XP) or fixmbr (XP) to make the drive usable for a fresh Windows installation.

Windows 7 Installing Network Printer

I have a couple of parallel laser printers connected to a 3 port HP Print Server. HP Network Printer Install version 8 didn't work for me. I had to go and get the version 7 file from my Vista Computer (luckily still had it) and installed that - it worked. Then I forgot that Win7 doesn't ship with a comprehensive set of printer drivers, so I had to install a local printer as HP Laserjet 6L (download required) and then the driver would be available for install as a network printer - again - hardly a seamless procedure for installing a network printer. This is yet another example of what makes Mac fans cheer so loudly.

I give up, reinstall Windows 7

I give up on my Phenom 9850 / Gigabyte MA785GM-US2H Windows 7 Pro computer. It kept on crashing after I rearranged the RAM. So, now I have two matched pairs of 1 Gig DDR2 in there (1 set of Nanya and 1 set of Elpida Elixir) for 4 Gig total. It was crashing with some Platinum (GB Micro) 2 gig sticks (not of the same manufacturer).

As I was poking through the BIOS, I noticed my hard drives were not in AHCI (native SATA) mode and that hardware virtualisation wasn't turned on. So, before I reinstalled, I backed up my hard drives to a Fantom Esata 1 terabyte HD. This was much faster than using USB 2.0 (what would have taken hours on USB 2.0 took about 20 minutes with Esata). The Gigabyte MA785GM-US2H mainboard has Esata built in, so this was one reason I chose that board. These SATA and hardware virtualisation settings must be set BEFORE installing Windows (as I discovered when my Win XP Virtual Machine didn't work when I turned on hardware virtualisation in the BIOS with my previous crashing setup). So, with these BIOS settings changed, I'm hoping to finally have a stable Windows 7 Pro 64-bit system.

Vista Ultimate 32-bit install with Vista Home Premium Upgrade Disk

Well, finally got around to installing the used OEM Vista Ultimate 32-bit I bought on Kijiji in June 2010. Problems galore! Using the DVD that came in the case didn't work. It always hung at the last step. I also had the problem of the system being way too hot in a mini-tower case. So, after 3 tries with that Vista Ultimate DVD, I transferred the mainboard and HD to a bigger case with 4 extra fans. Tried to get Ubuntu 10.04 to install and it failed. So, I remembered I had a 32-bit Vista Home Premium Ugrade disk. I installed Vista Ultimate from that disk (which has SP1) without issue! What you do is DON'T TYPE IN THE PRODUCT KEY and choose Vista Ultimate as the edition you bought. It worked! Then the activation problem - internet activation said the product key was already activated. So, I had to do phone activation. First time, I got cut off, so I phoned again and finally got to a live person and he activated Vista Ultimate over the phone for me. Now, I'm doing SP2 and getting it all updated. BTW, the computer is a Gigabyte AM2+ (AM3) mainboard with 4 gig and a Phenom II 940 processor.

Now, I didn't get this idea by myself, it's based on this article I recalled from a few months ago.

The Talent Code and Mindset

I've been reading the Talent Code (a condensation of The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance). One thought that came instantly to mind is how do the Aden Bowman Senior Football coaches ignite the players of a small school to 3 straight city championships and two provincial championships in 3 years?

Talent Code starts with deep practice which creates the broadband networks that result in expertise. Myelin (page 44-45) is the stuff which wraps around nerve fibres (page 31, 38) and Coyle compares it to creating a broadband neural network. What is deep practice? Rule 1 (page 79) is to chunk up the task. Chunking is about taking it one step at a time and slowing down practice so that you can attend to errors and correct them. Rule 2 is repeat it - attentive repetition is a must. As Horowitz said (page 88) skip 1 day practice, he notices, skip 2 days practice, his wife notices, skip 3 days practice the world knows it. Rule 3 is learn to feel it. He sums it up as (page 92): 1. Pick a target, 2. Reach for it, 3. Evaluate the gap between step 1 and step 2, 4. Return to step 1. In other words, when one is deep practicing, you are operating at the edges of your current ability and this helps to build expertise (and myelin).

The second part of the book is about ignition (motivation). On page 104 there is an interesting graph showing that a student who is committed can practice less and achieve more that an uncommitted student who practices more. On page 107 he quotes an interesting piece from Tom Sawyer (Tom 'conning' his friend to paint the fence). On page 135-137 he refers to Carol Dweck's Mindset work. Students who were praised for effort rather than achievement eventually achieved more because they adopted a growth mindset instead of a fixed mindest.

Now, this stuff all makes very good sense. There are really very few natural born talents. The 'talented' are not born that way. Instead, they have unconsciously developed a way to attain expertise. The physiological manifestation of this expertise is building myelin (much like athletes building muscle through exercise). The unconscious mind can process 11 million pieces of info/sec whereas the conscious mind can only process 40 pieces of info/sec (page 112).

The next part is about KIPP, a college prep school programme. One common thread seems to be a built-in desire to achieve as the students are largely from have-not families (sort of like the rundown Russian tennis school). The standard motto is "Work hard and be nice". The primal cues KIPP students follow (page 149) mirrors the sporting examples he's already used. Page 150, self-discipline is twice as accurate as IQ in predictng a student's GPA - more evidence that one is not born with talent. Page 150 (Mindset stuff) - the only way to reach them is to change the way they see themselves.

The last chapter - Epilogue is a must read. He refers to Dweck's work again and summarises most of what he's talked about. He also ends with a personal experience coaching his previously hapless Little League team. Although they did not win the tournament, they did improve vastly over their previous outings. He also noted that Toyota's culture of continuous self-improvement was key to their rise. This is what I thought was needed in our CDMs last year - however, there is not a true learning community where people feel comfortable having a real discussion rather than the typical show and tell.

Wooden's quick and precise comments is similar to what Dylan Wiliam indicated about feedback in a video Garry Davis referred EHCI staff to - feedback should be given every 30 seconds. Now, that would seem hard to do in a class of 35 like I had last year. I think the only way to get this kind of 'just in time' feedback is to develop a true learning community where students use peer and self assessment to make progress.

More to come ...

Piano lid finally installed

The piano lid that was lying around the living since April was finally installed by John's Furniture Repair today. He was recommended by both Bruce Gibson and Yamaha Piano Centre. Still not happy with the whole process as Willem van Suijdam doesn't give his customers any service. NEVER BUY A PIANO FROM THE MUSIC GROUP in Burlington, Ontario. Mason and Hamlin, on the other hand is an honorable company that manufactures quality instruments. Do not confuse the head office with Mason and Hamlin Canada which is largely the same thing as Willem's good for nothing outfit.

Suzuki Summer String Experience was Great

Our kids attended the Saskatoon Suzuki Strings Summer Experience and it was great. We found out about this summer camp from a flyer sent home from Lakeridge School and signed up our kids. They had a pretty good time and will be signing up for the program this coming fall. It's pretty amazing when they can arrange something for a 3 year old (it was 'taxing' for our guy, but it worked for the most part). I highly recommend this summer camp even if you don't plan on taking violin lessons. They even played tennis with Philip Kashap for one of their electives. We have asked him to give our kids private lessons this coming year.

Windows 7 BSOD strikes again

Surfing with Firefox (3 tabs) and while reading about the VBRun site on VisualBasic.about.com, the computer rebooted (blackscreen). On reboot, it started up, but as my desktop was showing up, it blue screened and showed an error IRQ not less than. Rebooted and it hung at the BIOS startup screen. There were some strange pixels showing up. Had to press the reset button to reboot. It hangs as the OpenOffice.org registration popup came up (I couldn't click on anything on the screen - it was hung up). Pressed reboot again and now I'm doing this blog post.

THIS IS CRAP.

As I was searching for info on my problem (in Firefox), the computer rebooted (black screen) again. Upon successful reboot, I did a system restore back to June 18 (before the June 24 issues). Noticed that there were more updates on July 1 and 2nd as well. When the system restore rebooted the computer, I got a black screen, but it wasn't hung up as I could move the mouse around. I turned on my TV to check if it was also a black screen and it was. So, I control-Alt-DEL into task manager and finally my desktop magically appears after a while and the system restore says it was successful (to June 18). The OpenOffice.org registration popup came up again, but I could click on it.

So far, with the restore back to June 18, there have been no problems and I could even burn a DVD with PowerProducer 3 (USB 2.0 to IDE DVD burner). I've turned off automatic updates. Definitely a stupid MS Update issue that's plagued my computer for the past 10 days.

Here are some links that may be associated with this problem

Yahoo search irq not less than bsod

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/237132-44-irql-equal-bsod

More computer woes

Got a couple of used Gigabyte GA-M62P-S3 mainboards with AM2 CPUs for cheap this week. These are high end socket AM2 boards that can take AM2+ and even AM3 CPUs (with the beta BIOS). They were also made in Taiwan (unlike the recent new Gigabyte AM2+/AM3 boards I just bought which were made in China. I had preferred Gigabyte because 3 years ago when I was in Taiwan, they were still making boards in Taiwan, not China. Sad, they've fallen into the China fever of other Taiwanese companies.

I took out the Asus AM2+ mainboard I had running Vista Home Premium and swapped in the Gigabyte. Swapped the Athlon X2 5000+ Black Edition CPU from the Asus and put it into the Gigabyte and took the Athlon 3500+ from the Gigabyte and put it into the Asus. Then I put the Asus board into the compact mini tower that Tom Shabbits gave me a few years ago. Got the Asus board running Ubuntu Linux 10.04 relatively easily.

Next, tried to get the already installed Vista running on the Gigabyte board. Kept on crashing. So, I booted into safe mode and let the drivers install that way. It was installed and I even could run internet with Safe Mode (with networking). However, no matter what, it wouldn't boot into Vista regular mode. So, unplugged the 500 Gig drive that had Vista installed and put in a brand new WD 1000 Gig. Tried to install Vista. Hung. Checked the size of the drive in the BIOS and it showed up as only 33 Mbyte! Had to do a BIOS update. So, fired up the basement computer and downloaded the latest stable BIOS and put it on a flash drive. Then flashed the BIOS on the Gigabyte board and now it says the drive is 1000 Gbyte. Tried to install Vista again. Hung again. Unplugged the PS/2 mouse and plugged in a USB mouse. Tried to install Vista again. Got the Blue Screen of Death (BSOD - now that I think of it, what an appropriate acronym - an overdose of BS!). So, now I'm firing up Memtest 86+ to see if there is anything wrong with the 2 Gig stick of DDR2 667 MHz I have in the computer. I think I'll plug in a USB keyboard next time too.

Now I know why people don't like Windows. However, I won't buy Mac for various reaons ($$ being a big one). It's a lot easier to get Mac running because it's a know quantity (only one hardware vendor). It's quite amazing how Linux (Ubuntu say) can boot from a CD and run on a great variety of computers. Hopefully, I won't be wasting too much time tonight ....

Still have the problems with Windows 7 Pro being unstable on my "main computer" (Phenom 9850 with 6 gig memory). ARGH!

Here's a link I just found of others who had problems with the 2010 June 24 updates. Not much for solution though, but looks like it's a MS stupdity problem. Here's another post related to QuickBooks that identifies two updates that are causing the problem (I'm guessing)! The problem is from 2 MS updates released on 6/22,KB977354 andKB976576.

Windows 7 Blue Screen of Death

After the June 24th Windows 7 updates, I now have an unstable crashing computer. I am not amused. This morning, I got my first BSOD. I was copying from the Esata HD to the USB 2.0 DVD-RW at home when the BSOD came up. Rebooted and this time, my computer rebooted without warning. It even did this while I was doing an option Windows 7 update (to recognise SDHC cards bigger than 32 gig). This is CRAP. I didn't even get this kind of garbage with Windows Vista. I might have to go back to XP or Vista for my day-to-day computer. This does not happen with Ubuntu from my limited experience. I will not go to Mac because I like using the keyboard and Macs command a premium price.

More 'fun' with Windows 7

I don't believe those stupid Windows 7 commercials one bit. Today, I had trouble with HDMI audio on my ATI Radeon HD4350. The main display is an LCD monitor connected to the Gigabyte mainboard Radeon 4200 via DVI. My LCD TV is connected to the Radeon HD4350 PCI Express 2.0 video card. I wasn't getting any audio via HDMI on the TV and couldn't figure it out (it always was showing not plugged in). Finally, I shut down and did a cold boot. The HDMI was finally 'connected'. Sure is stupid that Windows 7 can't autodetect the connection - you have to reboot before it will see the HDMI audio connection! Of course, I still have to manually select the ATI Radeon HDMI as my default audio output. Kind of dumb I can't tell which one it is (the onboard 4200 or the PCI Express 4350).

Allergy season coming in Saskatoon!

Well, the great thing about the rain has been that I've not had watery, itchy eyes. I got my first allergic reactions today. It's going to rain tomorrow, so that'll be good.

DARN ALL THESE AUTO-IMMUNE PROBLEMS!

Géza Anda died on 1976 June 13

One of my favorite pianists, Géza Anda, died 34 years ago. I got to know his name from the complete 12 LP set of Mozart's Piano Concerti I bought at Fidelio Records in Calgary when I was in high school. That set is still somewhere in the basement in Oakville. It's available on CD now, but I've not bought it because I already have Barenboim's set with the BPO and Ashkenazy's set with the Philharmonia. It's interesting to note that Anda composed some tasteful candenza's for the Mozart piano concerti for which Mozart did not leave a written cadenza. The first recording I ever heard of KV 467 was Anda's later Eurodisc recording with the Wiener Symphoniker which was made shortly before his death. That recording was in my Great Men of Music Mozart box (Time-Life Records). I bought the 5 CD DG set Géza Anda, Troubadour of the Piano from DG Webshop as an MP3 download because I couldn't get it from Amazon.ca. It was from that set that I finally heard the glories of his Brahms B-flat concerto (earlier recording with his countryman, Ferenc Friscay) and the Schumann that I love. There's also his intriguing recording of Schubert's D960 and some beautiful Chopin.

Robert Schumann was born 200 years ago today

Schumann is one of my favorite composers. It's been 200 years since his birth in Zwickau, Germany. I was first attracted to Schumann by the Fantasy, Op 17. I remember when I lived in Oakville, on CJRT, Paul Robinson and Bruce Surtees mentioned how it ends with a question. The 3rd movement of the Fantasy is some of the most beautiful piano music ever composed. The recording I first discovered this masterpiece from was Murray Perahia's. Since then, I've grown to admire the recordings by Géza Anda and Maurizio Pollini. The Symphonic Etudes (Op 13) recording by Pollini made such an impression upon me I declared Schumann along with Mozart and Brahms as the music closest to my heart. I gave my sister the Pollini CD which I bought mail order from Templar Records in London (when I was in grade 10) and she just loves it too. I'm waiting for my DG Schumann anniversary box to arrive. I'm listening to Géza Anda's recordings of these two favorites in my car this past week. I LOVE SCHUMANN'S PIANO MUSIC :)

Next anniversary is 1833 - the 200 year celebration of Johannes Brahms' birth. I hope to be around for that one.

Google Docs for Educators

After the debacle in period 2, I tried looking for some how-to on Google Docs. This page is a great start. It focuses on collaboration and has links to some PDFs.

The main page of Google Education is also good.