(no subject)
This is probably one of the most weered things I've had happen in computing, but I did manage to sort
it out and the fix is bizarr and although it's repaired, I'm not entirely sure why!
I tried to install sound forge on the new eeepc 1000he on a second hard drive, a 320gb Western digital I
had lying around which had to be better than the 160gb provided.
This had an XP pro system, another improvement I really wanted, on it that I'd made from scratch using my trusty old unattend bootable CD.
My new Shintaro USB dvd burner from OO direct I got last week was also used to boot it and do the installing.
Anyway, after convincing all the drivers and programs I wanted on there to work, No, I didn't put anything Norton anywhere near it, Thanks very much, it all appeared to be a perfect working system.
That was until I attempted to get soundforge going!
Seems the computer ID was changing at random which is, as you'd imagine, something of a problem!
I decided to try the same thing on the bog standard system that was still on the drive that came with it, and ... No problem...
So, what the hell was going on?
Well, I made file cloans of both the default windows and my built one onto my desktop machine, deleted the stuff in the prefetch directory and cleaned out the hklm\system\mounted devices key in the registry
which makes XP quite happy to be coppied onto any other hard drive if you ever have to upgrade one.
Well, the tables turned when I effectively swapped the 2 encarnations of windows onto the other drives, and I now had the default one on my 320gb drive and the one I installed on the first partition of the OEM 160gb drive.
Both booted up quite happily, but oddly, my built system now on the 160gb drive no longer had the sound forge problem. So, it seemed to be drive, not, system related!
Of course, the OEM system on the WD 320gb drive started exhibiting the random computer IDS.
Naturally my conclusion was that the WD drives do strange things with some ID field, and I decided to give up and just use the 160gb drive and to hellfire with it! That was fine until I then re partitioned, built a quick and dirty unattend install of windows on this 160gb drive, I didn't want it in 4 partitions, to make it all bootable, and then copied my xp pro files onto it. Guess what, the computer ID went random again.... F**ck it!!!
Ok, so it isn't WD drives being weered at all, it must be something to do with the partition table, but what!
Well, I don't know, and probably never will, but what I did in the end was to fire up good old GRML linux off the CD vier USB and DD the first few sectors of the OEM 160gb image I had carefully kept onto the 320gb drive.
I then used linux's fdisk to delete the 4 partitions and re made one big one which I then set to type 7, set it active, and wrote it back.
I then put this drive in my sata doc, (every geek should have a couple of these)
and let XP on my desktop format it to NTFS.
I then coppied the built XP pro system back on yet again, crossed fingers, held breath and waited to see what would now happen!
Miracle 1: it booted!
and.....
Miracle 2:
Problem solved. Now sound forge, and probably any other app that uses hardware info to stop you enjoying their product registered and works!
So, there's something about the partition table that comes with the EEEpc 1000he and probably other models, that is different from whatever the windows install CDs make during the install.
Also, I had tried the following:
dd-ing /dev/zero over the partition table(MBR) to make it look like a brand new hard disk.
then partitioning the drive from fdisk under linux and formatting under XP on the desktop.
This was a complete failure and I think that was because the MBR didn't have the mucrosoft Id, and wouldn't even boot. so it had to all be based on an fdisk edited version of the OEM partition table that Asus provide out of the box.
What I'm not entirely sure of is just how many sectors are involved here.
so I tended to be safe and splat about 64 of them from my backup image onto the drive just in case!
I wanted to document this for my own purposes, but if it helps someone out there, good!
I certanly got no joy from googling at all when I tried!
so if this go's up, that should, in theory, change!!!
W
it out and the fix is bizarr and although it's repaired, I'm not entirely sure why!
I tried to install sound forge on the new eeepc 1000he on a second hard drive, a 320gb Western digital I
had lying around which had to be better than the 160gb provided.
This had an XP pro system, another improvement I really wanted, on it that I'd made from scratch using my trusty old unattend bootable CD.
My new Shintaro USB dvd burner from OO direct I got last week was also used to boot it and do the installing.
Anyway, after convincing all the drivers and programs I wanted on there to work, No, I didn't put anything Norton anywhere near it, Thanks very much, it all appeared to be a perfect working system.
That was until I attempted to get soundforge going!
Seems the computer ID was changing at random which is, as you'd imagine, something of a problem!
I decided to try the same thing on the bog standard system that was still on the drive that came with it, and ... No problem...
So, what the hell was going on?
Well, I made file cloans of both the default windows and my built one onto my desktop machine, deleted the stuff in the prefetch directory and cleaned out the hklm\system\mounted devices key in the registry
which makes XP quite happy to be coppied onto any other hard drive if you ever have to upgrade one.
Well, the tables turned when I effectively swapped the 2 encarnations of windows onto the other drives, and I now had the default one on my 320gb drive and the one I installed on the first partition of the OEM 160gb drive.
Both booted up quite happily, but oddly, my built system now on the 160gb drive no longer had the sound forge problem. So, it seemed to be drive, not, system related!
Of course, the OEM system on the WD 320gb drive started exhibiting the random computer IDS.
Naturally my conclusion was that the WD drives do strange things with some ID field, and I decided to give up and just use the 160gb drive and to hellfire with it! That was fine until I then re partitioned, built a quick and dirty unattend install of windows on this 160gb drive, I didn't want it in 4 partitions, to make it all bootable, and then copied my xp pro files onto it. Guess what, the computer ID went random again.... F**ck it!!!
Ok, so it isn't WD drives being weered at all, it must be something to do with the partition table, but what!
Well, I don't know, and probably never will, but what I did in the end was to fire up good old GRML linux off the CD vier USB and DD the first few sectors of the OEM 160gb image I had carefully kept onto the 320gb drive.
I then used linux's fdisk to delete the 4 partitions and re made one big one which I then set to type 7, set it active, and wrote it back.
I then put this drive in my sata doc, (every geek should have a couple of these)
and let XP on my desktop format it to NTFS.
I then coppied the built XP pro system back on yet again, crossed fingers, held breath and waited to see what would now happen!
Miracle 1: it booted!
and.....
Miracle 2:
Problem solved. Now sound forge, and probably any other app that uses hardware info to stop you enjoying their product registered and works!
So, there's something about the partition table that comes with the EEEpc 1000he and probably other models, that is different from whatever the windows install CDs make during the install.
Also, I had tried the following:
dd-ing /dev/zero over the partition table(MBR) to make it look like a brand new hard disk.
then partitioning the drive from fdisk under linux and formatting under XP on the desktop.
This was a complete failure and I think that was because the MBR didn't have the mucrosoft Id, and wouldn't even boot. so it had to all be based on an fdisk edited version of the OEM partition table that Asus provide out of the box.
What I'm not entirely sure of is just how many sectors are involved here.
so I tended to be safe and splat about 64 of them from my backup image onto the drive just in case!
I wanted to document this for my own purposes, but if it helps someone out there, good!
I certanly got no joy from googling at all when I tried!
so if this go's up, that should, in theory, change!!!
W