Windows 7, UEFI, and Boot Error 0xc0000225

Back in February, the motherboard failed on my laptop and took the hard drive with it. I sent it in for repair, and when it returned I immediately set about removing that crapware Windows 8 and replacing it with Windows 7 Pro.

For the next week, I must have installed Win7 half a dozen times. It would install successfully every time. I could download and apply all the updates. But eventually it would encounter a boot error. Something like this:

Boot Manager:
Windows failed to start. A recent hardware of software change might be the cause. To fix the problem:

1.Insert your Windows installation disc and restart the computer.
2.Choose your language settings, and then click "Next".
3.Click "Repair your computer."

If you do not have this disc, contact your system administrator or computer manufacturer for assistance.

Status: 0xc0000255

I searched the internet. I found a lot of information about rebuilding the boot record. Nothing worked. I tried converting the whole disk to an MBR disk. No joy.

Then I hit on the solution.

I converted the disk back to a GPT disk and performed a clean operation. This completely wiped the drive of all partition information. I ran the installer again, and let the installer create the necessary boot partitions. I defined my OS and Data partitions.

It turns out that when I was massaging the partitions that were on the disk when it came back from ASUS, I deleted one of the required partitions. For whatever reason, the OS would start successfully for a while without this partition, but eventually it would fail spectacularly.

So the solution seems to be:

1. Boot to your install disk.
2. At the language selection screen, press Shift+F10 to get a terminal.
3. Enter diskpart and press Enter.
4. list disks to display a list of the disks on the system. 
5. Select the appropriate disk drive with the sel disk command. (Ex.: sel disk 0)
6. Enter convert gpt and press Enter. (I assume if you want to use MBR that it would be fine, just use the convert mbr command.)
7. Enter clean and press Enter.
8. Reboot to the install disk and install as normal. The installer's partition manager will handle creating the necessary boot partitions.

So if you have this issue, there is a fair chance that you have gunked up the required partions.

Transfer your email from Thunderbird to Outlook 2013 using GMail in 10 easy(ish) steps.

For the last 12 years or so I have been using Mozilla's Thunderbird application as my email reader. I was also using either OpenOffice or LibreOffice as my office suite. My boss finally got a subscription to the Microsoft Developer's network, meaning that we had access to multiple licenses for Office 2013, which includes Outlook 2013. Since some of the documents I must work with don't format correctly if they are opened in OpenOffice or LibreOffice, I decided to install Office 2013. Coinciding with that, I had a motherboard failure in my work laptop and was presented with a new one. I figured it was as good a time as any to convert to Outlook 2013, since I had been experiencing random freezes with Thunderbird.

Imagine my shock to find that Microsoft had made it all but impossible to import mail from any other mail program -- even Outlook Express. (That right there, I say that right there, is what we call sarcasm, son.)

I did find some commercial applications that claimed to be able to facilitate the conversion, but I just couldn't bring myself to pay $50 for something I'm going to use for less than an hour, ever. So I did what all good geeks do - I saved that $50 by spending $500 worth of my time looking for a free solution.

I didn't find one.

Not to be deterred, I did some thinking. And I came up with a way to move my email over, for free. I would just use GMail.

Here's how it goes:

Step 1: Get a throwaway GMail address.

Step 2: Make sure that your new GMail account has IMAP enabled. Go here and follow the prompts.

Step 3: Configure your GMail account in Thunderbird. You can find those instructions Here. There is also a good discussion of the relationship between Thunderbird folders and GMail Labels.

Step 4: For each folder of archived mail you have in your main Thunderbird account, create an identical folder in the GMail account in Thunderbird.

Step 5: Open each main Thunderbird folder and copy all emails to the corresponding folder in the GMail account. Since the GMail account is set up to use IMAP, when you copy those emails in they get mirrored up to your GMail account. It even preserves the original send date. Be sure the synchronization is complete before proceeding to Step 6.

Step 6: Configure your GMail account in Outlook 2013 and do a send/receive to download all of your email from GMail.

Step 7: Configure your main email account in Outlook 2013 and create your folders.

Step 8: Copy over the messages from your GMail account folders to your main email folders in Outlook. 

Step 9: If you wish, you may remove your GMail account from Outlook and delete everything from your GMail account.

Step 10: Pour yourself a beer, buddy. You're done. For free.

Nokia N810

Back during the fall, my truck was broken into, and my Sansa MP3 player was stolen. I have been wanting a new MP3 player ever since. Another thing I have been really wanting is a portable GPS system. I have also been pretty enamored with the iPod Touch, even though I am the farthest thing from an Apple fanboy you'll find. The reason I like the iPod Touch is that you can access the internet with it.

I think I may have found a device that will allow me to keep eschewing Apple products and get all the functionality that I am looking for. The Nokia N810 is an internet tablet, but rather than being the size of a laptop, it is approximately the size of an iPod Touch, a little thicker, maybe a little larger in the other dimensions, but it'll easily fit in your shirt pocket.

It has a web browser, audio player capability, and the ability to act as a GPS. The downside is that it costs $475. I can get a 15% discount, but that's still in the $400 neighborhood. That's more than I can afford right now, so I guess I'll have to keep admiring it from afar. It really does look like a nice device, though. Maybe I'll be able to afford one soon.

UN Tries to Take Over the Internet

There is so much media now with the Internet and people, and so easy and so cheap to start a newspaper or start a magazine, there's just millions of voices and people want to be heard.

--Rupert Murdoch

According to an eWeek article, the United Nations is planning to try to wrestle control of the internet from the United States. What makes this scary is that it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that if the UN manages to take control of the internet that it won't be long before they will be regulating what can be posted. Any organization that cozys up to China and puts countries like Lybia on a "Human Rights Council" can't be trusted with something as important as the internet. The UN's own Declaration of "Human Rights" states that freedom of speech is guaranteed...unless that speech interferes with the UN's goals. Think about that for a moment.

To its credit, the US Government is planning to fight the takeover attempt. The US invented the internet, and the rest of the world is hitching it's wagon to the invention of the US Military. If they get especially belligerent about it, I would fully support withdrawing completely to within the US with regard to the internet. Just make it work for the US, and let the rest of the world figure out their own system. In other words, take our ball and go home. We'll see how long the rest of the world will last without being propped up by the US.

Million Dollar Homepage

When I was young I thought that money was the most important thing in life; now that I am old I know that it is.

-Oscar Wilde

There was an item that was discussed on TWIT for October 2, 2005 about the Million Dollar Homepage. It seems that some guy put up a page that has one million "pixels". Advertisers (or just ordinary folks) can purchase pixels for a buck a pixel. So if you wanted to post a 10x10 pixel ad, it would cost you $100.

Apparently, the guy is doing this to pay for college, and I've got to say that it's a pretty ingenious idea. It seems to be working, as they said he had made about $250,000 (and had his PayPal account frozen, as well). What do you think the chances are that clones of this site are going to start popping up like crazy?

Tech Vidcasts and BitTorrent

I used to be a huge fan of the show "The Screensavers", which aired on TechTV every night. What could be better for a geek than a live television show devoted to the cutting edge of technology? From Leo Laporte to Patrick Norton to Kevin Rose, I felt as if the stars of the show were somewhat of a "geek family" to me. I was extremely saddened when Comcast bought TechTV and merged the channel in with their horrible G4 channel. After the merger, they basically dumped all the tech-based shows in favor of shows having to do with video games. They kept The Screensavers, but Leo and Patrick weren't part of it. The show quickly went downhill. It finally got so bad that I couldn't watch it. It eventually turned into a show called "Attack of the Show", which is some of the most atrocious television you could watch.

Imagine my elation to find out that my favorite Screensavers alums were doing video podcasts. Now I could watch my favorite tech personalities without the constraints of a corporate structure holding them back. The webcasts are great, by the way. I look forward to each new episode. I have added links to my favorite shows to the menu on the right under "Science & Technology". TWIT (This Week In Tech) is hosted by Leo Laporte, with a slew of guests that usually include Kevin Rose and Patrick Norton, as well as John Dvorak. Systm and Diggnation are productions of Kevin Rose, with co-hosts Dan Huard and Alex Albrecht. DigitalLifeTV is hosted by Patrick Norton and Robert Herron from TechTV. Command-N is a show hosted by Amber MacArthur, who is a TechTV Canada host. All of these are worth checking out.

All of this brings me to BitTorrent, a fabulous bit of file-sharing technology. This technology doesn't necessarily make it easier or quicker to download a file, but it takes the bandwidth burden off of the distributor. Since you're pulling "bits" of the file from your peers (others who have or are downloading the file), you're not costing the distributor bandwidth charges. I think this is important for the fledgling download-only shows. Most don't have advertisements, or they have very little ad support, so they're not making a ton of money. Bandwidth is expensive, and with the popularity of these personalities, their monthly bandwidth can be measured in terabytes (!!!). The use of BitTorrent takes some of this responsibility off of them, thereby ensuring the continuation of these great shows.

I personally use the Azureus BitTorrent client, and while it is slower than a direct download, I see it as my duty to help these guys out in any way I can. Check out these shows -- you'll like them.

Private Space Flight Cometh

Humanity must rise above the Earth, to the top of the atmosphere and beyond, for only then will we fully understand the world in which we live.

--Socrates, 500 B.C.

 One of the most exciting news stories of 2004 was the completion of the quest for the X-Prize by Burt Rutan and his Scaled Composites crew. In case you missed it, Burt and company managed to launch the first private-sector astronauts into space, recover them safely, and repeat the feat within two weeks. And they did it all without any help from the government.

The feat that they accomplished is all the more amazing in that the space vehicle (SpaceShipOne) is made completely of composite materials and utilizes no heat shields. Hopefully NASA is paying attention. The recovery is accomplished without the violent re-entry that we've all become accustomed to seeing through the use of a shape-changing spacecraft. The tailfeathers of SpaceShipOne rotate upon re-entry and cause the spacecraft to flutter back to earth like a shuttlecock, instead of burning its way through the atmosphere, a-la the Space Shuttle.

It has always been my belief that left to our own imagination and inventiveness, that man can overcome any obstacle, and Rutan managed to overcome an obstacle that NASA continues to just deal with. Rutan made a lot of noise in the days and weeks leading up the the launch of SpaceShipOne needling NASA for their inefficiencies, and while somewhat mean-spirited at times, it was right on the money. The shuttle has been in service since what, the early eighties, and in that time what has changed to make space flight safer? Not much. The safety of the crew still relies on extremely fragile heat shielding tiles upon re-entry. I sincerely hope that NASA sits up and takes note of the fact that re-entry can be achieved much more safely.

But that's not the point of this missive. The point is that private space flight is coming, and coming fast. It won't be affordable enough for the masses to begin with, but neither was airline travel. Now, I can fly from Atlanta to San Francisco for a hundred bucks. The same will be true of private space flight.

BBC News has an article (go there) detailing the involvement of the billionaire founder of Virgin Atlantic airlines Richard Branson with Burt Rutan in the creation of the first private fleet of spacecraft. The sole intention is to take civilians into space, and in coming years to do it cheaply enough to allow almost anyone to make the journey. The exciting part is that the spacecraft can take off from one location and land in another. Could this be the future of trans-oceanic flight? Quite possibly, and the implications of that are dire for trans-oceanic airlines of today.

This appeals to me because it is reminicent of the beginnings of aviation as we know it. We're looking at the beginning of a new era of human flight, and when you realize that you're living in a time when history is being made and appreciate it, it's all the more amazing what Rutan accomplished. He didn't just win a million-dollar prize, he took the sole ownership of the realm of space away from governments and placed it firmly in the lap of private citizens. The challenge in the future will be keeping the governments of the world from attempting to quash private space travel in the name of "safety".

It's an exciting time to live in. I'm glad I'm around for it.