Eventually My Bootcamp Is Giving Up on Me

Note:
This article was written before I found http://support.microsoft.com/kb/928218/ which explains uninstalling Office 2007 manually when "add and remove programs" is failing.

Been almost 15 moths now that my macbook was installed in dual boot mode. It was nice. I love it. Bootcamp was such a tough and nice, saviour of my daily life. Until just now, I have to retire it.

My office work is done in WinXP like ASP and VB coding. But yeah, I love web design as well. Therefore I had Adobe Suite like dreamweaver, flash, photoshop, and stuffs. Also I have this Visual Studio installed. Sure I have Ms Office 2007 trial to see how it works. Until then I could not uninstall it. I then checked the details of my installed softwares and I found some could not be uninstalled. Using third party software to uninstall them can be messy, so I won't do it. Leaving scraps of uninstallable software is always bad. That slows your system down. Some people call it Winrot phenomenon. Check Winrot term this website and also this article.

Damn. After I tried to uninstall it a couple of times and no luck, I decided to uninstall the whole WinXP and reinstall it from scratch. Hopefully a clean install.

A friend of mine once said, a bad luck never comes as a single event, it always comes in as a row of bad unlucky events. It happened to me. After those backing-ups and successfull installation, I could not activate my copy of windows. This is a legal copy of windows, so I could not figured out why. So I activated my copy via phone. I was very happy that I could login after that, until later on it asked for another activation after I rebooted the system. The very weird thing was it asked for an activation but as soon as I activated it, it said it was already activated and then kicked me out of the system. Geez, I could not login in any way. Of course I contacted microsoft to rectify this problem and it was solved until I rebooted.

And that's it I've had enough.

Then a light shone on me and a voice said: put it in a virtual machine, use VirtualBox! :-)

I've got it, I tried it and I was happy. Here I am, writing blog thru my WinXP on VirtualBox.

Iphone or Winmo 6.1, and what's your back-end, dude? Xserve or W2K3?

I've got a HTC touch HD in my hand. It's nice and sleek. I love it. Off-course I love Iphone too, which I don't have. I've got a macbook that makes it kinda cool to have an iPhone in company. For me it is kinda hard to decide to buy or not to buy my self an iPhone. Why? I'll tell you my story.

Back in Y2K, i've heard about this dream that Apple was gonna throw out an apple phone. That would be a killer. Cell phone business was huge, but it looked like it needed the "touch of Midas". Looking back to the history of computer and music, sure Steve Jobs was gonna do it again. This time the cell phone. And he did it.

iPhone was and is fancy.

But we all know that phone is not just a talking box. That's not what iPhone is meant to be, that's not any cell phone is meant to be. Like right now, cell phone is an extension of computer evolution. From mainframe to PC to cell phone. Apple put together the mobile evolution chains right.

Now, year 2009 is gonna be an interesting year. All phones will be iPhone-like phones. Check out Blackberry storm or check out all mobile phone operating systems. Be it Microsoft Mobile, Android, or Symbian, they are now quite alike. Apple has bent the mobile phone into an integration with computer world. All come along.

But the questions are, to me, still about function. Supposed you have an Microsoft Exchange server in your back-end, do you really still need a Blackberry to live? should it be a common windows-mobile-with-outlook phone be alright? I am sure so. Actually if you have a mail server with IMAP4 or IMAP-IDLE capability any phone with IMAP should be ok. They still push mails, don't they?

Good articles explaining the back-ends thingy of those gadgets at http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM.Tech.Q1.07/685B09D3-950B-4B23-8B1F-A56D448F7208.html

What I see in Indonesia, especially in Jakarta and Bandung, is quite funny that most people fall for Blackberry eventhough they only use voice and sms just like what they do with entry-level phones. It is about coolness, not function. Why not iPhone instead? because iPhone is just too America centric, too far away. iPhone is not as cool as Blackberry for "non-computer" people. This mostly girls and young middle-class people using Blackberry don't really know Apple and its pioneering habits in techs and gadgets. They know Blackberry better with the campaign they've been doing.

That logic above is quite explaining that many people like myself as well have this wish for an iPhone. I don't even have an Xserve server. I have an Exchange2003 in my back instead. I think Steve Jobs knows that too, that's why he put compatibility between iPhone and Exchange and any IMAP4 (iPhone supports IMAP-IDLE too). Hypotetically, supporting IMAP-IDLE means supporting good email synchronization. Hypothetical because I haven't seen such as good sync with IMAP-whatever-version-that-is. I am sure if you have a winmo version 5 or up, you have tried to sync mail using IMAP, and I bet you failed to sync the "sent items" folder. There might be options like "copy sent items folders" and "choose folder to sync", but they just don't work.

I dont have an apple's Xserve server. Still I'm gonna buy myself an iPhone. Maybe.

Now, what do you wanna do with the device of yours?

Internet Explorer 8 Error Right After Update in Windows XP

IE 8 is cool indeed. Some has speculated on it's speed as the fastest of all web browsers in the universe. You can check this out: http://tonyseno.blogspot.com/ , however the article contradicts with http://www.techradar.com/news/internet/web/tested-google-chrome-vs-ie8-vs-firefox-3-1-462848 and this http://www.cnet.com.au/browser-battle-ie-8-vs-opera-9-5-vs-safari-vs-firefox-3_p4-339287694.htm and some others, including my own testing. But indeed Teno's article went along with this article http://www.pcworld.com/article/161616/browser_showdown_ie_8_vs_firefox.html .
I guess it is hard to pinpoint which one is the best with so many variables and not just the objective ones but also in a matter of taste and behaviour.

Most of all, I think, it is the fact that 90% of computer users are using any version of Microsoft Windows, which has Internet Explorer in it. That's why IE8 is such an important issue to discuss. Check the statistic at http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_os.asp. And with all what Microsoft Windows can do, it all becomes a blessing... or a curse.

Some people are having issues with IE8 right after updating their PC thru Windows update. To be precise it is the installation of Software Distribution Service 3.0 that is bundled with the updates is the trouble maker. The funny thing is, Software Distribution Service 3.0 is not listed in the update. It is like the old pain in the *ss Windows Genuine Advantage.

The issues are listed :

http://www.microsoft.com/communities/newsgroups/en-us/default.aspx?dg=microsoft.public.windowsupdate&tid=47ec8d20-a50b-4652-ac96-e13136fb22a3&cat=en_US_2231886c-4c59-45b0-92e0-8881ddf5f40b&lang=en&cr=US&sloc=en-us&m=1&p=1
and also http://forums.techarena.in/windows-update/856021.htm
and also http://www.cybertechhelp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=160450

Yes, google it and you will find troubles every where. But no solutions.

Here's the anatomy of the problem:
- a windows update came in, so it was then installed. No matter you installed it or by an automatic windows update.
- Internet Explorer 8 error. Just could not connect. It just froze once you put any address in the URL and hit enter.
- In the Event Viewer > Application you would have an Event ID 1000 error, saying "Faulting application iexplore.exe, version 8.0.6001.18702, faulting module entapi.dll, version 8.0.0.240, fault address 0x0000368a."
- Then you were so pissed-off so you switch to FireFox or Opera or Safari no matter nice and cool IE8 is with the great things so called "web slices" or "accelerator" in IE8. Now before you do that, I'll shed a light for you to overcome this.

Get a shower, have breakfast (after thru the horrible night trying to fix it) and take the pill. Here's the solution.

What I did to work around this was:
1. once you had the problem, check on your system restore.
2. there's a check point called Software Distribution Service 3.0, restore to that point.
3. after restored check the update you have taked that caused the headache.
4. in the High Priority list, uncheck (untick) whatever listed there, and check/tick "don't show this update again".
5. select/tick the other options in as "software, optional" and "hardware, optional", it doesn't matter.
6. you can update.

Basically, windows will intall Software Distribution Service 3.0 when installing one or some of the high priority updates. My guess is, it prohibits anything "illegal" or "considered illegal" software installed in the OS. And how microsoft judges the installed software as legal or illegal is not always accurate. The software that is incorrectly judged as illegal is mostly Microsoft Office 2007. Check my previous article http://burningzeppelin.blogspot.com/2008/12/move-ahead-to-vista-office-2007-or-even.html, this was year 2008.

I am now investigating Microsoft Office 2007. I need to now the best times and worst times we're gonna get with Ms Office 2007 before I really use it company wide. You know what, some day Vista or Win 7, Office 2007 and IE8 will be the standard tools in most offices. May be most companies are gonna use them, although less but still majority( http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_os.asp ) . Some will switch to Linux and Apple, why? Because if you use Windows OS but still have problems with it's application (browsers or word processor) then what good is that to have a great OS without the ability to get the job done?