Merry Christmas! From Samsung

Well, I finally got my LCD TV last Christmas - a 46" Samsung Series 9 LCD. It is simply an amazing TV. I hung it up over the fireplace - spectacular. Will post pictures of this installation when I get back to the States.

Icon Repair Trick

If you ever find one of your icons not displaying, this simple flipping of display settings will repair the icon:

1. Right click Desktop -> Personalize -> Display Settings
2. Change Colors from 32-bit to 16-bit -> Apply -> Yes
   
3. Change Colors from 16-bit to 32-bit -> Apply -> Yes

Voila! Icons fixed.

Virtual PC 64-bit Trick

64-bit version of Virtual PC isn't really a 64-bit app but a 32-bit app. Supposedly only Virtual Server supports 64-bit, whereas Virtual PC supports only 64-bit drivers when needed as explained by Virtual PC's Guy Blog. The above link for 64 bit setup on Virtual PC's site is thus a misleading trick.

TreeComp rocks!

I remember using this nifty tool years back when working in the Internet Services Group at Wells Fargo - TreeComp. Its a great way to compare hundreds/thousands of files to verify backups or installations and helped me handle a massive upgrade to Wells Fargo's application and documentation server farm (I tricked Windows into comparing trees that were actually networked maps onto samba shares with Solaris backends).

Anyways, I'm upgrading one of my PCs to Vista x64 from Vista x32 and I'm not sure I can simply rely on my Windows Home Server backups for restoring just the data files I want kept from my Vista x32 installation. So I'm covering my bases by manually copying all the critical data files I want in my new Vista x64 installation (I'll be wiping the hard drive for a fresh clean Vista x64 install).

Well after a long copy process, some files failed to copy over due to filenames being too long or something like that (most likely within my Music files section). So am not sure exactly how much was copied and don't really want to re-copy everything. So TreeComp to the rescue. This cool tool will allow you to choose two top level parent directories and it will compare the two tree branches for you. Further, once you've identified the folders that are missing on one side of the comparison, its as easy as right clicking left side for instance, and commanding it to sync to right side effectively filling in the gaps from where copy failed originally. Of course you could do this at the top root as well to do this all in one shot.

I'm glad this homegrown tool still lives on even with Vista. Well done Lennert Ploeger!

High DPC issue solved!

Well, after much sleuthing via Google and various technical forums, I finally got the hint at what is up. Things were definitely pointing towards Nvidia drivers until I read a couple of posts about how DPCs can be affected/masked by a myriad of issues from OS settings to BIOS settings to loose cables to poor driver implementations.

One such OS setting was with regard to Vista by default enabling AHCI mode. I tried to find reference to such a mode in BIOS but its not applicable to Nvidia based motherboards because I believe it only applies to Intel based mobos.

The solution was to disable AHCI in Vista by flipping this setting to zero in the registry:

\\HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\msahci\Start: 0

Voila! Transfer speeds went from avg of 5-10 MB/s to well over 50 MB/s sometimes bursting to over 100 MB/s! Nothing like solving something you know is wrong with hard sleuthing work! Thanks to TwoGuns who helped me start thinking about AHCI more with his focus on enabling AHCI via the BIOS - which made me realize I didn't even have such a setting to begin with (http://www.vistax64.com/vista-hardware-devices/99457-sata-esata-hard-drive-speed-poor.html).

High DPCs when running Complete PC Backup

I noticed DPCs consuming one of my cores after initiating a Complete PC Backup today. I'm running GeForce 175.19 with nForce 9.64. It is backing up my C: drive (4 drive SATA RAID 0) onto my eSATA drive (single 500 GB Western Digital). So I was thinking there may be issue with my RAID or eSATA drivers?

I'll see if DPC Latency checker quites down after the Complete PC Backup is finished.

Others have posted issues with high DPC Latency but usually in context of video and/or sound driver problems: http://www.evga.com/forums/tm.asp?m=495045&mpage=1&key=&

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Silverstone TJ03
Silverstone Zeus 850w
EVGA 680i A1
Intel X6800 (B2 stepping)
Zalman CNPS7000B-ALCU
Mushkin HP2-6400 4x2GB @ 1.8v w/ 5-4-4-12-2T
BFG 8800 GTX 768MB
4xWD2500KS 250GB Caviar (RAID 0)
WD MyBook 500GB (eSATA)
Creative X-Fi Fatal1ty
Logitech G15 Gaming Keyboard
Logitech G5 Laser Mouse
Mitsumi Card Reader/1.4 FD
Sony DRU-820A, Sony 16x DVD-ROM
Vista Ultimate x64 SP1 (Aero), Backed up via WHS