Entries for DoomBringer

Boot issue: no POST, no video display [Boot issue: no POST, no video display]

DoomBringer — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 05:33:02 GMT

I've got a custom built machine using an Asus P5K Deluxe motherboard, Intel Quad Core, 2GB RAM, GF 8800, and Vista 64 bit Ult. Yesterday, the machine booted fine and functioned completely normally. There was quite a bit of wind here in CA and the power was flakey yesterday, but the thing is on a UPS, so I rule that out.

When I went to turn it on today, it won't boot at all. I do not get any signal to my monitor over any of the DVI connectors. All fans spin up (chassis and CPU) and the HDD and DVD ROM devices do spin up. The case I'm using lacks a speaker, so I can't get a beep code (I did find a small speaker thing in my spare parts that looks like it hooks into the PC speaker header, but it doesn't make any noise after hooking it up. I'm not sure it works.)

Things I've tried so far:
I've reseated the video card
Moved the RAM around into different slots
Checked all the connections

I'm thinking I'll have to strip it down and build it back up. I do have some extra DDR2 RAM I can try swapping around with; I just need to sort out which of the extra is good.

in reply to Boot issue: no POST, no video display

FSX on Mythbusters [FSX on Mythbusters]

DoomBringer — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 10:43:30 GMT

I saw the new episode of Mythbusters where they tested out a few myths with airplanes. Adam and Jamie were lucky enough to use NASA's full-on flight simulator. The idea was to try landing a plane without any experience and only an ATC person talking them down.

Right when they started showing playbacks from inside the simulator, a small caption showed up stating "Images courtesy of Microsoft" and I recognized the thing as FSX. That was pretty neat to see that I too could use essentially the same code as NASA (but they had actual LCDs for the glass cockpit and authentic controls).

in reply to FSX on Mythbusters

Re: HOW TO GET TO HEAVEN WHEN YOU DIE [Re: HOW TO GET TO HEAVEN WHEN YOU DIE]

DoomBringer — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 01:11:57 GMT

If heaven is going to have people like Burger Chef, count me out. Of course, I'm atheist so I don't care anyways.

in reply to Re: HOW TO GET TO HEAVEN WHEN YOU DIE

64 bit building in VS2005 on Win2k [64 bit building in VS2005 on Win2k]

DoomBringer — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 19:29:59 GMT

I've got a 64-bit project in MSVC++ 2005 that builds just fine on my own machine, which is XPSP2. Another machine, running 2000SP4, never builds the 64-bit platform in my project. If I open the batch build dialog and tell it to build the 64-bit version, it doesn't do anything. The output window just has "1 skipped," if anything at all. There is no existing previous output at all.

I don't get it at all, really. My machine is the one I used to develop the project, and the box running 2000 is the main build machine, so I need it to work there.

in reply to 64 bit building in VS2005 on Win2k

Re: This Just In [Re: This Just In]

DoomBringer — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 09:23:52 GMT

Mark Brown wrote:
Can anyone say, Cognitive Dissonance?

Appears shooby is lashing out to help reinforce the apparent disconnect between what he wants to believe, "Linux is Better" against what he knows, "Windows is Better".

I kill me ;)

Shhh the thread is now about cats.

in reply to Re: This Just In

Re: Stossel To Gore--"Give Me A Break" [Stossel To Gore--"Give Me A Break"]

DoomBringer — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 21:41:50 GMT

MikeeeG wrote:
Of course, Al Gore does not explain that within the past several years, one of may issues is that the earth expels green house gases naturally. Volcanos expel dust particulates ,sulfer dioxide, and
other assorted contaminates into the atmosphere. Not to mention there are methane hydrates that emerge from deepsea deposits.
About the polar bears dying off. those that die were from severe storms, and there population has increased ever so slightly over the years.
I for one realize that earth's climate fluccuates a couple of decades ever so often.
Al Gores prize was won merely as a political tool which is not a very honorable action.

Except you're omitting the very relevant fact that human activity produces much more CO2 than natural processes ever did. Don't delude yourself.
rayray:
Tom Brokaw said it is real, so therefore it is. Because I say so. Also, if you're a real libertarian, you'll realize that "the market has spoken" by giving Gore's film a real success in the theaters, ipso facto magico, global warming is real.

in reply to Stossel To Gore--"Give Me A Break"

SQL LIKE (but in reverse?) [SQL LIKE (but in reverse?)]

DoomBringer — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 22:48:39 GMT

In SQL, I know you can do something like this:

select * from tbl where col1 like %foo%

and it will return any results that have "foo" inside of them, for instance, myfoo would be returned if it was in the table. What I want to do is a bit the other direction. Is there an easy way to input "myfoo" and get "foo" out (assuming "foo" is a value in the table)? More specifically, I want a count of hits, but that is easy enough to add on after the query is there.

Some other notes: col1 is the primary key, so in the end I'm only looking for a 0 or 1.

The end goal is to find out if the inputted parameter, "myfoo" contains a word from the table. What I was thinking might be possible is using a temporary table to hold "myfoo" and then using a WHERE-IN clause and a nested query:

select * from temptbl where col1 in (select * from tbl)

But then I realized that WHERE-IN probably doesn't support LIKE.

in reply to SQL LIKE (but in reverse?)

How to get root on a mac without the password [How to get root on a mac without the password]

DoomBringer — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 23:31:45 GMT

http://www.hackmac.org/?q=node/4

Hey check it out who needs to make fun of UAC with a snarky dumbass advert when you can get root without knowing the password.

Of course, I wonder if a similar attack is available for other systems. Making the OS think it is in a preconfiguration state might be possible for other OSes.

in reply to How to get root on a mac without the password

Regex building [Regex building]

DoomBringer — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 19:50:01 GMT

Regular expressions have always been arcane scribblings to me -- random characters thrown together that perform magic and are inherently incomprehensible. At least, to me, that is.

Anyhow, I'm working on learning them, and I was running into some interesting things.

First, I want to write a regex that will match if the inputted string has the same character in it three times in a row. So, "aaa" will match, but "aata" shouldn't. I first came up with .{3,}, but that matches anything with length of three or higher.

Another trick I want to do is to match if the characters contained in the string are sequential. For example, "Test" wouldn't hit, but "abc" would, as would "123".

I'm a complete regex noob. I've read some tutorials and downloaded the regulator, but I'm still confused over this.

in reply to Regex building

IPv6 only [IPv6 only]

DoomBringer — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 01:02:22 GMT

I need to find a router that can be configured to only serve up IPv6. My DLink DIR-655 is a sweet router and supports both, but I need a pure IPv6 environment for various reasons. What I was thinking is that I could simulate it by using nothing but Vista and removing the IPv4 stack, but that would require installing many copies of Vista. Any chance I could find a router that could be configured to only give out IPv6? I'm hoping I can find something cheap as well.

in reply to IPv6 only

Check out the shameless promotion [Check out the shameless promotion]

DoomBringer — Sat, 07 Jul 2007 06:36:47 GMT

I don't know if anyone has seen this bozo on digg yet, but...
http://www.digg.com/users/beercosoftware/news/dugg
I see at least two stories about his own company. What, did he expect digg nerds to care about his prices?

Also, he likes pot apparently.

in reply to Check out the shameless promotion

This was too interesting... From Google to MSFT [This was too interesting... From Google to MSFT]

DoomBringer — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 11:21:11 GMT

Supposedly, someone is sending this all over the wires at MSFT. Someone who used to work at Google is now at the Borg-o-tron.
http://no2google.wordpress.com/2007/06/24/life-at-google-the-microsoftie-perspective/

An interesting take on it. I wouldn't want to have an office in a hallway, but all the free things are nice (but smart, as they're all done in bulk, hence, cheap as heck!). Now, I know someone who used to work at Google and live real close to the 'plex, so I could talk to people and find out.

in reply to This was too interesting... From Google to MSFT

Asus P5K embedded device [Asus P5K embedded device]

DoomBringer — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 07:04:47 GMT

My new motherboard has a built-in WiFi chip that works pretty well, all things considered. Windows Vista worked with it really well after I got the manufacturer's driver in there. It shows up as a USB device, and I guess they implemented it by hooking it right into the USB bus, and so it shows up in Windows as a something you can remove (the usual "Safely Remove Hardware" thing).

Now, this might be really crazy, but is there a trick I could do to get it out of the "Safely Remove Hardware" thing? It doesn't bother me much, but it doesn't make sense to have it in there.

Edit: Aside from removing it, of course. Duh, I still want the WiFi card. Beats taking up a whole PCI slot.

in reply to Asus P5K embedded device

I switched [I switched]

DoomBringer — Sat, 02 Jun 2007 11:59:06 GMT

Yes, that's right, I switched. To Vista x64 (ultimate).

I've been waiting on new hardware for a while, and I've finally gotten an Asus P5K, Intel quad core, and a GeForce 8800. The only problem I've had so far is that my board won't POST with all four gigs of memory, I think it must be a bad stick. I can't complain about UAC yet, or missing drivers: everything works with minimal effort. I spent more time fussing with trying to get it to POST than installing Vista. All that sweet kit gets me a performance index of 5.6 in one category, and 5.9s elsewhere.

I've still got to get on my old XP box and backup files and move some hard drives, but this machine is blazing fast and Vista is great! I can see why people would complain about UAC, but I have yet to really be bothered by it. (I think people are whiners, but that is just an opinion)

in reply to I switched

VS2005: can somebody else see this? [VS2005: can somebody else see this?]

DoomBringer — Thu, 31 May 2007 22:57:46 GMT

I'm working on a VC++ project, and I opened the Debug->Exceptions window, and expanded out some of the categories. Using the mousewheel, I rolled while the pointer was over the check boxes. Only the check boxes actually scrolled, and the labels and scrollbar did not move like I expected. Am I crazy, or is this an a bug? I clicked on a box, and it seemed to reset the labels on the left side. (I've installed SP1)

in reply to VS2005: can somebody else see this?

MS Forms 2.0 in native code? [MS Forms 2.0 in native code?]

DoomBringer — Thu, 31 May 2007 01:33:59 GMT

I'm trying to use the Microsoft Forms 2.0 library (found in FM20.dll) in native code. Does anybody have any prior experience with this? I've done the necessary include (the DLL and necessary include attributes), but it is a real PITA to work with, especially with Intellisense being there 50% of the time.

in reply to MS Forms 2.0 in native code?

world's most advanced programming language ever [world's most advanced programming language ever]

DoomBringer — Tue, 29 May 2007 21:58:24 GMT

edit: I was beaten by blowdart!

in reply to world's most advanced programming language ever

popularity dialer [popularity dialer]

DoomBringer — Fri, 25 May 2007 21:41:55 GMT

Somebody just used this site http://www.i-am-bored.com/bored_link.cfm?link_id=23519 on me, and used the "English guy" option. It freaked me the hell out until I was told about the phone dialer.

Now they probably have my cel number and will telemarket me.

in reply to popularity dialer

My MSDN gripe of the day [My MSDN gripe of the day]

DoomBringer — Thu, 10 May 2007 23:55:05 GMT

MSDN is both super awesome and infuriating at the same time. I'm working on implementing an Outlook 2007 addin that has a Form Region piece. I'm doing this in native code for various reasons, and of course, MSDN has shifted most attention to .NET. Which is nice if you're doing that. I'm pretty much forced to mentally translate into raw COM stuff, however, and it gets harsh.

For instance, instead of the managed Object, I have to pass things around in VARIANT (_variant_t) types, which gets ugly. Ugh.

in reply to My MSDN gripe of the day

64 bit VMs? [64 bit VMs?]

DoomBringer — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 19:21:14 GMT

I'm trying to run a 64 bit guest OS on a Win2003 x64 (Enterprise Ed. I think). I've tried VPC2007 (it warned me, so fair enough) and now I'm running Virtual Server 2005 (R2, of course). I can't get the VM to boot the install media (I want to install Win2003 x64). Is this something I should try with VMWare?

I've never used Virtual Server, and while slick, it doesn't seem to want to let me run a 64bit OS. What could I be doing wrong?

in reply to 64 bit VMs?

Windows Installer - Installshield [Windows Installer - Installshield]

DoomBringer — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 20:02:42 GMT

Hey guys,
I was wondering if anyone had some knowledge about windows installer and installshield. I have to clean up after some botched installs (my fault, really) and I was wondering what regkeys I should hunt down. I have the product code of course. The files are obvious, I think, and there are extra ones stored in program files as well I think (IS puts things in there... logs I think)

in reply to Windows Installer - Installshield

rpm arch? [rpm arch?]

DoomBringer — Sat, 31 Mar 2007 00:51:18 GMT

I'm trying to figure out the proper rpm spec incantation to build a package for amd64 when building on a i386 platform. The documentation I've found so far sucks, but I'm still looking. They mentioned the arch macro, but how the heck do I do it?

Edit: Found it, I think. http://docs.fedoraproject.org/drafts/rpm-guide-en/ch09s03.html#id2971154
Edit2: No, that link is for specifying where you can build it, I think. And I thought Installshield 12 was insane...

in reply to rpm arch?

Java and porting to 64 bit [Java and porting to 64 bit]

DoomBringer — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 16:19:24 GMT

You'd think that a IL/bytecode based language would ease porting efforts, but that really depends. For example, any time JNI is involved, things can get interesting. As it turns out, any DLL (and I suspect so files on *nix) must be compiled into the same native code as the JVM. So I've been doing a bunch of poking around in old VC6 projects and updating them to VC8. Aside from old code smell, that is easy enough. (This makes me wonder if p/invoking into old 32 bit DLLs is supported from the x64 .NET)

I've also seen a lot of external dependencies that muddy things. A lot of OSS tools that might be used seem to either be abandoned or just not compiled into 64 bit binaries. I'd rather not go to the effort of maintaining their code, so I'm thinking we can leave the exe's as 32 bit, and java can invoke them through system exec calls.

Something I need to look into is having a 32 bit service launching a 64 bit JVM. It seems to work, but testing isn't complete. Recompiling the service program to 64 bit should resolve ambiguity I think. (The service executable is just a wrapper for some JNI/JVM invocation bits, so nothing fancy, just requiring more knowledge of javah than I'd care for)

Finally, doing a direct swap out of 32 bit JVMs and executables leads to interesting results. Some hardcoding to specific files in the JVM will break, and registry keys end up dangling. WOW64 is helpful with the whole redirection thing, but now that the code is native, it cannot find any of the registry keys anymore. Redoing the keys is necessary, of course. Most of the keys are made during an installer, so that installer will have to get some 64 bit awareness going on.

As a total WAG, I'd think that .NET would avoid a lot of this trouble. Any comment?

in reply to Java and porting to 64 bit

Code signing for WinMo apps [Code signing for WinMo apps]

DoomBringer — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 01:37:00 GMT

I've finished my Windows Mobile 5 application, and now I'm doing deployment. I'm signing my CAB and application code (dll and whatever) with signcode/signtool, using the spc and pvk (private key) options. On the desktop, checking the files' properties show the certs all in order (timestamped and all). I've done a simple Installshield msi installer that drives the ActiveSync to install the thing.

Once the install goes ahead with the CEAppMgr application, the Verizon Smartphone I'm testing on prompts me for permission to install the thing, citing an unknown publisher, when I have in fact signed it properly, AFAIK. I doubt Installshield will mess with my CAB or its contents, so I think messing with that would be pointless.

Now, I'm using the same signcode/signtool that is typically used for desktop code. Is that the problem? In MSVS, the option is to use Authenticode, which requires a filetype different from what I got from the CA. So I'm using a postbuild step:
$(SolutionDir)signcode.exe /spc "$(SolutionDir)\[redacted]" /v "$(SolutionDir)\[redacted]" /n "[redacted]" /t http://timestamp.verisign.com/scripts/timstamp.dll "$(OutDir)\$(ProjectName)$(TargetExt)"

I haven't done much research on whether or not there are differences between desktop code signing and mobile. I'm going to look around, but I was under the impression the techniques were the same. (MSDN on signcode doesn't say anything at all...) I really hope that I don't have to get a signature from the Internet Pope, The Duke of Verizon, and so on.
Edit:
http://blogs.msdn.com/windowsmobile/archive/2005/12/17/security_model_faq.aspx
Yeah, I need a different signing setup! Oops.

in reply to Code signing for WinMo apps

WinMo5 softkeys [WinMo5 softkeys]

DoomBringer — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 03:06:21 GMT

How would an application on Windows Mobile 5 "fake" a left or right softkey press (you know, the two buttons under the screen)? It doesn't seem like a keyboard or mouse event (or related message). The worst case here is doing a faked stylus tap over where the thing should be, but that is dangerous.

I'm looking at the SendInput() function on MSDN, and it seems where I would do it...

in reply to WinMo5 softkeys