SP2 Carries Interesting Baggage

I’ve upgraded to SP2 on my primary production machine. Prosaically enough, it’s named “Ed-PC” and is home to all of the important stuff in my life. I use this machine as a control central in my office, and Remote Desktop Connection provides access to my HP MediaSmart Servers (models EX-485 and EX-475), a Windows7/Vista dual-boost test machine with 8 GB of RAM and VMs out the ying-yang, plus my Dell D620 production notebook and my new techtoy, an Asus 1000HE netbook (both of these portables dual-boot, but the Dell does Vista/Win7 while the Asus does XP/Win7).

It’s been an interesting ride since I grabbed the ISO download from MSDN a couple of weeks ago. At first, I was completely pleased: the machine was very stable, worked without a hitch, and did everything I asked it to. Then I noticed Vista kept telling me my machine wasn’t connected to a network, despite uninterrupted Internet access. Here’s an image to ponder.

Look: a networking icon showing the Internet/World symbol that's "not connected."

Quite a trick, eh? A little research with Google showed me that not only was I not unique in my situation, but that some people started to experience this problem back when SP1 first went into mainstream distribution.

As an experimental fix — I wasn’t too optimistic it would help, and I was right as it turned out — I performed an upgrade install from a version of Vista Ultimate with SP2 slipstreamed , thinking it might repair the obvious registry issues I appear to be dealing with. But while it did improve my ability to access and use the network to which Vista thinks I’m not connected, I’m still seeing the same status information when I right-click on my network icon in the system tray. I can access and use all my network resources, and the network map even shows me what’s out there, but Vista stubbornly keeps on reporting that I’m not connected, no matter what I do.

Note the red X’s to the gateway and Internet, even though I can see and access them without a hitch (my Web browser happily lets me log into my Netgear router and manage its configuration, even though it’s not connected). Go figure!

Isn’t Vista just the greatest? I read the recently released official dates for Windows 7 — RTM in mid-July, general availability (GA) on October 22 — with great interest and anticipation, if not an outright sense of longing. As soon as I can lay hands on a valid, fully licensed copy of Windows 7, this machine is moving on up! Enough for me, already.

Asus Eee PC 1000HE Really Shines

I’ve been working with various Windows 7 beta builds for about three months now, starting with Build 7000, which Microsoft unleashed in January 2009. Along the way, I’ve worked with builds 7048, 7057, 7058, and 7068 as well. One of the things that has impressed me most has been how well my tiny little Asus Eee netbook has done with Windows 7, especially because the only beta version currently available (to me, anyway) is the Windows 7 Ultimate Edition that includes Media Center plus all the other bells and whistles that come with this edition.

A Blue 1000HE, from left, showing RJ-45, 1xUSB, headphone/mic jacks.

These are the only changes I made from stock to this unit:

• I upgraded the RAM from 1 GB to 2 GB (for a total cost of $19!). Rear panel access was really easy, and required removing only two small machine screws — a small magnetic Phillips head will come in really hand here —and swapping the built-in 1 GB noname DDR2-667 module for a 2 GB counterpart.
• I purchased an eSATA/USB 5.5″ external drive bay, so that I could mount a DVD burner, to use for installing the OS from a bootable ISO image (MS’s current preferred method for distributing Win7 betas; total cost $60).

It tickles me no end to see Windows 7 running nicely on this minimal computer. As the following CPU-Z stats show this netbook is pretty typical for PCs of its kind.

All the basic speeds for the Eee PC 1000HE are...well...pretty basic.

The Eee PC 1000HE normally runs at 1.6 GHz max on battery, but a special booster kicks in when running off the wall socket (via AC/DC converter) to kick it up to a maximum of 1.76 GHz (10% higher than stock). The Atom N280 is hyper threaded so it shows two cores on the Performance tab in Task Manager.

Although the N280 is single-core, its hyperthreading makes two CPU displays appear in Task Manager.

I love it that it normally runs only between 40 and 50 processes, and that memory consumption routinely hovers between 700 and 750 MB. In fact, the only time I ever encounter slow-downs is when antivirus or antispyware scans run — so I schedule them for the wee hours of the morning to encourage them to stay out of my way. I’ve used this machine to open half a dozen or more Web browser tabs (though it has also made me appreciate how svelte and fast Google Chrome really is), read e-mail, take notes (Notepad), and write documents (MS Word 2007) without running into any serious stumbling blocks.

47 processes for Win7 vs. 79 for Vista at similar load (click image to enlarge)

I’m still puzzling over how to benchmark notebook PCs. They’re too underpowered for a lot of the standard benchmarks (SysMark, MobileMark, and so forth) to really tell you much. Obviously some other kind of standard workload is called for. For now, however, all I can offer is my own anecdotal experience that working with the Eee PC 1000HE is at least tolerable, and often better than that. I especially like my ability to remote into the unit from my desktop PC (thanks to Win7’s support for Remote Desktop Connection) where I can access its content on a bigger screen.

So far, my beefs with this machine are few, and relatively minor:

• The keyboard is OK, and reasonable for typing. I’ve used the machine to take notes in the field on numerous occasions and it does the job. My only real issue is that the right Shift key is a bit smaller than I like and positioned lower and more to the left than my fingers expect. I often hit Enter instead of Shift, which can be a problem when surfing and/or filling out forms of any kind.
  

  1000HE keyboard (note small shift key at far lower right)

• The screen is small and the resolution likewise (1024×600). It’s quite legible and the color and brightness are good. But the lack of real estate makes Web surfing a bit more tedious than I like: too much scrolling! But that’s inherent to the netbook form factor…
• The Intel i945GSE graphics are good, by and large, but any time on-screen animation is called for the display is subject to fits, starts, and jerks. Vista and Win7 users will do well to limit or turn off the slicker Aero effects. Be aware also that even modest games (Backgammon, Solitaire, Hearts, and so forth) aren’t terribly smooth or fluid. Again, this is inherent to the usual netbook circuitry…
• No ExpressCard slot means no easy upgrade to 3G wireless LAN technology for this unit. Too bad!
• Only a modest collection of ports and connectors is available: VGA, 3 USB 2.0, headphone/mic min-RCA, Kensington lock slot, and a 4-in-1 memory card reader (SD, SDHC, Memory Stick, and Memory Stick Pro).
  

  1000HE from right, showing card reader, 2xUSB, VGA, and AC jack.

• I have a thing about touchpads: they often seem to lag behind my motions, and this one seems subject to that (to me) annoying flaw. Feel is OK, and buttons work well and aren’t too horribly situated at front right and left of keyboard deck, but I added a Logitech Nano V550 to my unit immediately upon purchase.

On the other hand, there is a lot to like about this machine, as long as you can live within its limits

• It’s absolutely tiny (about 10.5″ x 7.5″ x 1.625″ at the rear, 1.375″ at the front) and very light (3 lb 2.7 oz) , even including its extra-strength 6-cell battery. The neoprene carrying sleeve included with the unit makes it very easy to pack and schlep in an ordinary briefcase or knapsack. The design is both sturdy and attractive, though the glossy black plastic picks up fingerprints like crazy.
• Networking is fabulous on this unit. The built-in Atheros GbE wired network interface runs just as fast as my RealTek and Marvell GbE desktop interfaces (jumbo frame support, even). The Atheros 802.11a/b/g/n wireless interface also works very well (a special hack is available that greatly extends this driver’s range and fidelity from laptopvideo2go.com; be sure to grab and use this version).
• With added memory, it runs Win7 like a champ, and doesn’t do badly with Vista, either (though I recommend using VistaPE to build a more minimalist runtime image, as described in various postings at VistaPE.net and WinBuilder.net).
• The Seagate ST9160310AS 5400.5 Momentus SATA drive included with the unit is surprisingly fast and capable, despite its low 5,400 RPM speed and modest 8 MB cache. I bought the unit fully intending to replace the drive with something like the 320 GB Momentus 7200.3  ST9320421AS (about $80 best price) but lost my desire to do so after observing how well the current drive performed. Should I need a performance boost in future, I may still buy one, but for now, the current drive is more than OK: it’s fine. I’ve seen other reviews (most notably notebookreview.com) ding the drive, but it hasn’t caused me noticeable slowdowns except when scanning for viruses or spyware.
• On battery, this unit remains cool (most temps under 45 ° C) and quiet (no fan noise at all) which makes it well-suited for “true laptop use” (on your lap, that is). On external power, the power boost function means it does get pretty warm (drive at 42-45 ° C; CPU socket at 50-60 ° C; underside case temps 45-50 ° C).

There are still a few things about the unit that I haven’t really dug into yet. I’m hoping to find the opportunity to rectify and report on these in a follow-up soon:

• I haven’t yet mucked around with the SD card reader built into the unit, but I may spring for a 16 ($30) or 32 ($80) GB SD card to see if it works at all well for paging file and temporary file storage. My gut feel is that it might help a little, but probably won’t help a lot, if at all.
• I haven’t yet been in a situation where I have to run exclusively from the battery for an extended period, except for testing. In the lab or at my desk, the battery offers a substantial 4-6 hour time window for ongoing work, more on the low end of that range when watching video or doing more demanding tasks, and more toward the higher end when doing only light reading, text-entry, and basic productivity stuff (spreadsheet, PowerPoint, and so forth). I’ll be traveling to Pittsburgh next week, and plan to put the unit through its paces to see how it does.
• I haven’t ripped a DVD to the drive for in-flight viewing yet, and am curious to see how headphones and viewing work under those conditions. Thus, I also plan to rip some pre-recorded TV material to the unit to watch while on my upcoming trip as well.

I bought my Eee PC 1000HE on advance purchase through ProVantage in March for $375 plus S&H (total out-of-pocket costs just under $404). I spent another $80 on appurtenances (2 GB RAM, USB DVD burner/player). So far, I’m very happy with this purchase and have found the unit to be useful, highly portable, and reasonably productive for work use. I’m in agreement with the many reviewers who’ve named it among the best of the current crop of notebooks, and am glad I waited until product offerings were a bit more mature to pick this one up.

Rats! Weekend Power Outage Derails Steady ReliIndex Climb

Alas, my part of Central Texas took an extended power hit early Sunday morning. Although I’ve got a UPS on my production system, its battery is only good for about 90 minutes of backup power. By some strange quirk of fate, this power outage went for 151 minutes if the difference between my electric clocks (where I have to maintain time settings myself) and the cable TV box (where Time-Warner keeps time with its own NTP server) is any indication of its duration.

Why am I telling you this? Because this led to an abnormal Windows shutdown (I’m not using the USB link from the UPS into my production PC to trigger a deliberate shutdown because we so seldom have power outages long enough to require one during hours when I’m not at the machine anyway). Otherwise, my Reliability Index shows a straight upward inclination ever since I moved the paging file to my D: drive last Monday, as I reported in my previous blog.

Nothing but up since the day (highlighted) I moved the paging file.

Of course, this event sheds no light on whether or not my recent page file relocation adds to or detracts from the stability of my production Vista machine’s runtime status. Given the pattern of the month leading up to this change, and a completely trouble-free week following it, I remain somewhere between optimistic and increasingly convinced that I’ve found and fixed at least one source, if not THE source, for my ongoing Vista vacillations (I’ve been burned and bitten by Vista often enough to shy away from the notion of fast or final fixes).

Will this fix stand the test of time? I’m still watching and still hoping, and you can count on me to keep reporting as time keeps ticking past. You might also want to check out my recent TechTarget blog on prepping machines for the upcoming (some time this month, if rumor has any credence) Windows 7 Release Candidate, or RC build, from Microsoft later this month. For those in search of some good, free, and reasonably systematic Vista training online — not to mention online access to yours truly as the online instructor of record —you might also want to check these HP Home and Home Office Windows Vista classes I’m teaching right now: Microsoft Windows Vista: Advanced Customization and Tune Up Your Windows Vista PC. Both classes run through the end of May, and I’d be delighted to see any of my regular readers popping up there.

Could it really be that simple/stupid?

I guess I must be getting a little stressed about my production system, because I’m yo-yoing from the abyss of despair to the peaks of optimism. If you read my last blog, you’ll get a sense of what things look like at the bottom of that string. Today, the yo-yo is firmly grasped right here in the palm of my hand, and I’m wondering if perhaps a very simple fix might have addressed my mysterious stability problems. Let me explain…

I teach various classes online for the HP Home and Home Office Learning Center. Right now, in fact, I’m teaching two courses on Vista:

• Microsoft Windows Vista: advanced customization
• Tune up your Windows Vista PC

As part of what I do for this work, I have to write detailed introductions to each such lesson, partly to bring such information up to date where needed, and partly to leaven the information in the lesson with additional hard-earned wisdom I’ve acquired by breaking and fixing Vista in many, many ways over the past couple of years.

As I was reading over the materials for the advanced customization class yesterday, I came across a passage that indicated it’s not a good idea to situate a Windows paging file on a mirrored (RAID 1) drive. “Holy smokes!” I said to myself; “The C: drive on my production machine is mirrored. Could this be what’s causing my stability problems?”

Being a charter member of the “Try it and see what happens” school of Windows troubleshooting, I promptly relocated my paging file to the D: drive by turning off the paging file on C: (highlighting that drive in the paging file list, then clicking the “No paging file” radio button), after which I created a paging file on D: (I even went with manual sizing because with 3581 MB of usable RAM on my 32-bit Vista system, I’ve noticed that my paging usage numbers in Task Manager seldom, if ever climb above 3000 MB, so I set it to 3896 MB).

Paging file goes to D:, set size to range from 1024-3896 MB

That was Tuesday (4/7); today is Friday (4/10). Not a glitch, not a hiccup, not even a burp from my system in the meantime, after a solid month of steady every-other-day application “stopped working” error messages or a hung Windows Explorer/GUI that required a disruptive shutdown for me to regain control over my system.

I know I’m on the upswing, and maybe I’m jumping the gun. But gosh, moving the page file seems to have really helped a lot. A little research shows this admonition to date all the way back to the days of NT 4. How could I have missed this in all my Windows studies, certification book writing, and unabashed tinkering with settings, including paging file stuff of nearly every conceivable description? It seems that Windows can get confused when doubling up on reads and writes affects the responsiveness and behavior of the paging file, which is probably one of the busiest, if not the busiest, files in the NTFS file system.

Though I may be late to the party, I’m still glad to be here. Let’s celebrate sometime soon, after I’m convinced that it’s not just an upswing of irrational optimism that’s persuading me to believe my stability problems have been addressed. In other words, I’m waiting for the next curveball that Vista throws my way…

Time for other Vista options?

Drat! System stability on my production Vista PC is again becoming problematic. Over the past four weeks, my stability index has declined from its best-ever value of 9.72 to the dismal 5.65 it settled at yesterday, after a desktop freeze forced me to fire off yet another “disruptive shutdown” on that system the day before.

Here’s a breakdown of what I’ve dealt with over that period:

1. 3/09/09: iexplore.exe stopped working
2. 3/15/09: ClientInfo.exe stopped working (part of the WHS software for my HP MediaSmart server)
3. 3/21/09: Disruptive shutdown (desktop hung)
4. 3/22/09: TrueImageMonitor.exe and WHSTrayApp.exe both stopped working, plus a disruptive shutdown
5. 3/23/09: Explorer.exe stopped working
6. 3/24/09: Ditto above
7. 3/25/09: fm3032.exe stopped working (part of the software for my Dell AIO 968)
8. 3/27/09: Disruptive shutdown
9. 3/29/09: Core PaintShop Pro and ipoint.exe both stopped working, plus a disruptive shutdown
10. 3/31/09: Disruptive shutdown
11. 4/04/09: SetPoint.exe and ipoint.exe both stopped working
12. 4/06/09: Disruptive shutdown

The way I see it, I have a few options to try to clean things up. First, I can try to roll back to a system image dated on or before 3/8, the day before this decline kicked in…goes off to check the WHS backup info…3/1 (index 9.18) is as close as I can come. Second, I can blow my system drive away and reinstall Windows and all the applications…goes off to check Revo Uninstaller…73 of them altogether, including numerous items I think I could do without. Third, I can spend $60 on a copy of Laplink PCmover and transfer my programs, files, and settings to a different PC. I’ve got a big, noisy, recently upgraded QX6800 box I could switch to for the time being, after which I could do a reinstall of Vista on my current QX9650 box, then Laplink back from the QX6800 to the refurbished QX9650 for another $60 onto a presumably cleaned-up and less shaky installation as my schedule permits. I want to  move my QX9650 into an Antec 900 case I purchased for it anyway, so this would also give me a perfect opportunity to do so, without unduly compromising my productivity.

Thus, to me the question becomes: do I want to spend more time and less money (grab newer PSTs and other files from current image, roll back to 3/1 image or reinstall Vista and all apps…Ouch!!) or spend less time and more money (take the Laplink route and spend $6o or $120 to go one-way or both ways respectively between current and other machine).At this point, the roll back to 3/1 image after grabbing everything I need from last night’s backup, or the current machine itself (PST files for sure) appeals most, because I am shy about spending money that isn’t absolutely necessary to expend right now. That said, the key questions then become “How long will this take?” and “When will I have/find the time?” Good ones, both of them, given a crazier than usual working schedule this week!

I’m still pondering this choice, and probably will for at least a couple more days, so please: feel free to chime in if you’ve got a better idea or different approach to recommend, or a relevant “war story” to share. Thanks!