Seit langer Zeit sind wir heute abend mal wieder auf einer Live-Veranstaltung in der Paderhalle gewesen: Heart of Ireland, einer Show, die natürlich in Bezug zu “Riverdance” und “Lord of Dance” steht.

Ich bin nicht genug Experte, um beurteilen zu können, ob im Vergleich zu anderen Veranstaltungen dieser Art diese Show nun gut war oder eher leichte Kost. Mir hat der Abend jedenfalls Spass gemacht und ich fühle mich gut unterhalten. Ich habe sowieso eine Faible für irische Folksmusik mit ihren Reels und Jigs. Ich sollte mich mehr darum kümmern. Die Paderhalle ist halt nicht die Köln Arena und damit fällt hier in der Provinz dann alles doch etwas kleiner aus. Jedenfalls sollten wir versuchen, in Zukunft öfter solche Verantstaltungen zu besuchen. Es ist doch ein “kleiner” Unterschied, die Musik im Ohrhörer vom MP3-Spieler zu hören oder die Musik wirklich live zu empfinden.

Ich hätte jedenfalls die Digikam mitnehmen sollten.

Since I’ve switch from Movable Type to WordPress and AuthImage, I ‘ve been pretty save from comment SPAM, but since the last 4 or 5 days I’m getting new comment SPAM.

Either the SPAMMERs found a way around AuthImage by examining the image or WordPress sports another security bug. Anyway, this SPAM is really annoying. I guess I have to have a new look at the available WordPress plugins.

I’m pretty happy to report, that my Windows PC finally really, really works. After having located the real culprit (the AMD 2600+ CPU), I went to my dealer today and the exchanged the faulty CPU. Instead of replacing the CPU one to one, I opted for spending some additional money and got a AMD 3000+ Barton instead. This will go nicely with the new GeForce 6600 graphics card, which is one the way (the current ATI 7500 Radeon simply doesn’t cut the butter any more with the current breed of games).

In the end this restores my confidence in my ability to deal with PC hardware. Until now there was still the doubt, that I had perhaps handled something incorrectly, but this is definitely not the case, since I really never touched the AMD 2600+ CPU.

I’ve written a number of entries about my attempt earlier this year to update my older PC with a new motherboard and an Athlon 2600+ processor (this, this, this, this, this and this). I didn’t really isolate the problem although I’ve been using the PC for the last half year without any major problems with the exception, that the Internet Explorer keeps dying. My son plays his computer games without noticing any real problems.

Now, while going through the clutter on my desk, I came across a special diagnostic CD, which came with issue 11/2005 of the computer magazine C’t from the Heise publishing house. So, I decided to give the CD a try to see, if it included a tool, which might help me to pinpoint my particular problem. To my happy surprise, one of the included tools indeed showed a problem.

The tools, which produced a positive result (an error in my case) is Hardalyzer. Here is an extract from the system information view (output is in German, but pretty self explaining):

  Hersteller: AMD
         Typ: Athlon XP / MP / Mobile XP
        Kern: Thoroughbred
  Bek. Takte: 1666..2167 MHz FSB: 133..166 MHz DDR
   Eigenname: AMD Athlon(tm) XP 2600+
    Gemessen: 2079.5 MHz (12.50x 166.4 MHz)
      Rating: zw. 2400+ u.2600+ (bei gemess.Takt)
Befehlssätze: FPU,Ext.MMX,Ext.3DNow!,SSE

    L1-Cache: 64K+64K
    L2-Cache: 256K unified

---------------------------Board & BIOS----------------------------
     BIOS-Hersteller: Phoenix-Award BIOS v6.00PG
                  ID: 08/02/2004-nVidia-nForce-6A61BM4CC-00
          BIOS-Datum: 08/02/04

            Chipsatz: nVidia nForce2 Ultra 400

And now for the very interesting output of the CPU tests (FEHLER = Error, bestanden = passed):

 Prozessor                                   FEHLER------------------>
 CPU-Kern                                    bestanden
  CPU-Register                                bestanden
  Stack-Manipulationen                        bestanden
  Adressierungsmodi                           bestanden
  Prozessor-Flags                             bestanden
  Integer-Arithmetik                          bestanden
  BCD-Operationen                             bestanden
  Bit-Operationen                             bestanden
  Ablaufsteuerung                             bestanden
  String-Operationen                          bestanden
  Prozessor-I/O                               bestanden
  Exceptions                                  bestanden
 FPU                                         FEHLER
 >FDIV-Bug [alte Pentium]
  Laden und Speichern                         bestanden
  Befehlssatz                                 FEHLER
  >FDIV-Bug [alte Pentium]
  Runden und Abschneiden                      bestanden
  Exceptions                                  bestanden
 MMX-Einheit                                 bestanden
  Datentransfers                              bestanden
  Gepackte Arithmetik                         bestanden
  Gepackte Vergleiche                         bestanden
  Datenkonvertierung                          bestanden
  Logische Operationen                        bestanden
  Verschiebe-Operationen                      bestanden
 3DNow!-Einheit                              bestanden
  Datentransfers                              bestanden
  Gepackte Arithmetik                         bestanden
  Gepackte Vergleiche                         bestanden
  Datenkonvertierung                          bestanden
  Logische Operationen                        bestanden
  Verschiebe-Operationen                      bestanden

As you can see, there’s an error within the FPU tests. This is a result, which fits perfectly with the problems I’m seeing. The problem apparently only shows, when a particular instruction is hit. And apparently the Internet Explorer uses exactly this instructions, while most of the other programs don’t use that instruction. As a comparison I also tested my old Duron 1200MHz and the new Athlon 2800+ system and both pass the above test.

It was so frustrating, that all the things, which I tried, to pinpoint the problem, didn’t produce any results. Who knows, where the CPU’s came from, which my dealer gave me, since I distinctively remember that we also replaced the CPU’s back in February. Anyway, as a last confirmation I’m going to install the 2800+ CPU to see, if the problem really has disappeared then. And then I will see, if I can negotiate something with my dealer.

I’ve already written, how pleased I was with the ntfsprogs. Here is another testimony.

I’m running another Windows XP instance in a [Vmware}(http://www.vmware.com) machine at work, still not yet installed with SP2. And here I had the same problem, that there wasn’t sufficient disc space available, because I didn’t configure the Vmware with large enough discs.

So, this time I configured an additional disc through the Vmware GUI and connected a Knoppix 3.9 ISO image with the CDROM drive of the virtual machine and booted the Knoppix CD image. I used QtParted to create a new NTFS (primary) partition within the new Vmware disc. By employing the command pipeline

ntfsclone --save-image --output - /dev/hda5 |\
    ntfsclone --restore-image --overwrite /dev/hdb1 -

I transferred the data from the old D: drive, which was a partition within an extended partition, to the new Vmware drive. After successful completion ntfsresize was used to extend the file system size to partition size.

ntfsresize /dev/hdb1

After this I used QtParted again to remove the old D: partition from the first Vmware disc and resized the C: partition to maximum size. Once this was all complete I deconfigured the Knoppix ISO image and rebooted into XP, which is now running from two Vmware disc instead from one with two partitions. It actually takes two reboots before Windows is usable again, since the process of integrating the new drive requires a reboot.

After all this SP2 installed without problems. I’m quite happy, that this all worked so flawlessly. This gives me enough confidence, to do something like this at home. My main Windows PC is running with a 30Gb disc, which is nearly full and my main Linux PC, equipped with a 160Gb drive, could use a couple of additional Gigabytes as well. So I’m probably going to buy an 200Gb drive, move the data (this includes the original XP Home installation) from the160Gb drive to the new one. Then the 30Gb drive will be replaced with the 160Gb drive. Since this all involves NTFS partitions, this won’t pose any problems with the ntfsprogs.