The Johnson Blog

Ramblings of a geek with a few hobbies…

Tag: vista

  • Vista System Restore

    I know a lot of people that disable the System Restore feature of Windows (XP and Vista), and I just don’t get it.  Whenever an update is applied to the system, a checkpoint is created of the system configuration (some registry keys, services, system dlls, etc.) and if something goes wrong with the update you can quickly rollback to a checkpoint.

    This has saved me on more than one occasion from an errant Windows Update and even regular software install.  Case in point, this morning I went to upgrade my copy of VMWare Workstation 6 from 6.01 to 6.0.2 and the install sat there for 30 minutes before I had to kill it.  That left VMWare in a completely toasted state and wouldn’t start.  Greaaaat.

    After looking around my system, I saw that none of the app’s files had been removed.  It just looked like one (at least) of the services that it depends on was removed from the system (just a registry entries).   Whew, a system restore to a checkpoint of just an hour earlier (due to a Windows Update) fixed the problem and I’m back up and running.

    I highly recommend leaving the System Restore feature turned on.

  • Mounting ISOs in Vista

    Does anyone out there have a suggestion for software that actually works on Vista for mounting ISOs? I’ve tried a few with varying results – from immediate BSOD on boot to nothing but a black desktop on boot (cursor included).

    1. MagicISO – This is the one that worked the best until a reboot. I’d just arrive at a black background with a mouse cursor – no login screen
    2. Virtual Clone Drive – Caused the Blue Screen of Death upon install and subsequent boot. Even in Safe Mode. I had to boot from the Vista disc, attempt a repair (which failed), then drop down to command line and rename/delete system32driversvclone.sys (I think that’s what it was called). Then everything came back up so I could uninstall this horrible excuse for an app. Note, I just realized that download page doesn’t include Vista as a platform. Oops. I had read others who were successfully using it on Vista so gave it a shot.
    3. Can’t remember what I uninstalled – I uninstalled it because ULead didn’t recognize the virtual drive. Now that I’ve ran into these recent problems I really wish I could remember the name of the software I was using because it worked except for the ULead visibility.
    4. Daemon Tools Lite – Yeah, this might have worked but is packaged with spyware crap.

    All I want is to be able to mount an ISO as a virtual CD/DVD drive. A nice-to-have feature would be for that drive to appear as a CD/DVD drive in ULead Media Video Studio 11 (edit: changed the name). For some reason MagicISO did (and worked until reboot) but others didn’t.

    Any recommendations?

  • RadioShark with Windows Vista

    If you’re like me, and own a RadioShark and have been unable to get it working under Windows Vista, check out Snaptune One.  It’s software that does exactly what the RadioShark software does AND it works on Vista!  Thank you Snaptune One!

  • FTP problems on Windows Vista

    This is an addendum to On Windows Vista from a couple months ago. This weekend I’ve been making some modifications to the installation process for Chef, making it so the database engine isn’t packaged with my installer and making it such an enormous installation package. So now I have it so that when Chef is run for the first time, it will (if needed) download the SQL Express install from my website.

    All fine and dandy, until I needed to upload the SQL Express install to my hosting account. I usually just fire up my FTP client and never think twice about it. Well this time it didn’t work. A couple megs would be uploaded and then the client would ask me if I want to overwrite the (incomplete) file on the server. I tried several times with FileZilla to no avail. Then I tried SmartFTP which is certified for Vista. Same thing. Figuring I couldn’t go wrong with WS-Ftp, I gave that a shot and it too failed.

    Today I tried the upload from my Windows 2003 server using FileZilla, and it worked without a hitch. WTF.  Just to rule out a problem with my internet connection the previous day, I tried again from my Vista desktop and it failed once more.

    Has anyone else seen such behavior?