Cav's Place

Decided that something’s really wrong with my Windows 7 install, so after fighting with myself over it over the weekend, seeing as I was too afraid of messing this up as well, Monday I installed Vista again on the second HDD, with all the old drivers and the old versions of all programs, to at least get back to what I had and know that I’ll have this to fall back to whenever something goes wrong, and perhaps also when I happen to want to watch something on TV, seeing as the problems my old TV tuner has with Windows 7 are undeniable. Next would be reinstalling Windows 7 and taking it step by step with drivers and newer versions of important software, to see what goes wrong and when and then decide where to go from there, but I don’t see myself doing that while I’m in such a state and don’t see myself getting out of this state unless it’ll work, and possibly not even then, so that’s a big problem.
At the same time, BitDefender seems to have launched an offensive against MiniDuke, the result of which is wrongly flagging many simple executables as variants of it, including my one attempt to make an actual Windows executable while briefly trying to teach myself D, back in 2010. There seem to be other issues around this time as well, with many others complaining on the forums of similar issues with very simple programs written in a variety of programming languages, false outbreak detections or wrongly blacklisted sites, so they certainly broke something in the definitions database while trying to look for variants of this and it sure came at the wrong time for me, one little issue being that, after I had to undelete the file, it obviously no longer has its original date to mark when I gave up on trying to learn that.

Seeing as I was alone these days, I also wanted to put the old IDE HDD into dad’s computer and, while I was there, also scan a few more things for MobyGames, and perhaps also for Goodreads. However, though I kept saying every few hours that I really should get to it, I never even got close to that computer, and the only time I touched the old HDD was when I put it in the box I hold all other computer stuff in before cleaning my room today, so at this point I’m not sure when or even if I’ll manage to get myself to do that.
It should all start to slowly fall into place once I’ll find a starting point and then learn the quirks of Windows 7, as well as those of all the other new programs and versions, but that’ll require trying first. I mean, Vista is very quirky, but I’ve been using it for nearly five years now, and have also been using the other programs for many years, the video driver is still the one from 2009, so I had a very long time to get used to all the issues and know how to mitigate them. For example, avoided a computer freeze just earlier today, after spotting the signs right away and immediately doing what a lot of trial and error taught me has to be done in such moments. But having any new issue, which I won’t know how to deal with, pop up when I’m in such a state will just make me freeze in panic, so I really have no idea what to do…

We are born, we suffer and we die. When or how we die, how and how much we suffer, how much or even if we ever enjoy ourselves, what, if anything, we accomplish, simply has no relevance in the grand scheme of things. And that’s not only true for one person or another, but for all animal life. Worse, since animal life seems to be the final goal of the physical universe, it is ultimately true for everything. Universes appear, stars and galaxies are formed, the remaining materials gather to create planets and other smaller celestial bodies, minerals are formed on some of these bodies, microorganisms colonize a few of them, then plants and, ultimately, animals evolve. Eventually, some of those animal species may develop what we consider intelligence, create civilizations, perhaps even expand to other worlds, but it all has an infinitesimal effect if you think about it. No matter what they do or don’t do, sooner or later they’ll all vanish almost without a trace and without setting the foundations for the next level of development.
I mean, giant stars become supernovas in order to create the materials required to form life-supporting planets, which may end up being breeding grounds for life, which may develop and thrive, leading to civilizations, perhaps spacefaring ones, perhaps even great ones on a galactic scale, whether due to their achievements in and understanding of science, art, philosophy or anything else, but in the end why would it matter even then? Non-living things form, exist and, at times, cease to exist in order for life to have a chance, some microorganisms are vital for plants and animals, plants perform functions, both in life and in death, without which animals wouldn’t exist, but then what? No matter how developed some species become, they’re still animals and, no matter their perceived greatness, they merely live in order to live. Not even the spiritual aspect can change this, because souls, if such things exist, would still exist even without bodies, as that tends to be a defining trait of a soul or any other higher entity.

And then you have us, as a civilization. Nowhere near any sort of greatness, nowhere near any sort of impact outside our own little planet, and generally what impact we have even on this tiny world we happened to evolve on is negative for all but ourselves, and often even for ourselves. And when you and me and so many others are nowhere near mattering even in our own little corner of a solar system… What’s the point?
It is said that we need to create the purpose for our lives because life itself has none, which is definitely true, but why do it? We find reasons to live, goals to achieve, higher callings to heed, merely to justify our survival instinct; we wrap our relationships in greater meanings and spiritual values to justify our herd and breeding instincts, even more so for those of us rational enough to not intend to breed… But life is just life, in any form: A culmination, a realization of an universe refusing to admit that its existence has no point, no purpose, and that it’s been heading towards a dead end all along.

My rushed computer upgrade was essentially done on Tuesday, but I only closed the case this evening, deciding that I’ll wipe the old IDE HDD on dad’s computer, when I’ll install it there. A potential issue was my TV tuner, which doesn’t exactly have Windows 7 drivers, but I was able to use the Vista ones at first, so it’ll be detected, and then Windows Update found what it said was an upgraded driver for it. The image is poor, looking as if it’s captured at half the resolution and then resized, so the level of detail suffers a lot, but for now I guess I’ll keep it like this and look into getting another at a later point, perhaps even next year, as part of the major upgrade which was originally planned for this year.
Otherwise, there do seem to be a few other driver issues as well, since middle clicking on a tab always closes two of them and therefore needs to be avoided, there seems to be a significant performance loss when the video card is required to work for multiple processes at once, rebooting or shutting down seems to take longer than it should and something which I believe shouldn’t happen is happening during those final few seconds, and the system seems to need to “settle” after installing programs, becoming unbearably slow for a while when that happens. But I’ll see how the situation will continue develop, as well as how I’ll manage to get used to Windows 7 overall now, and then decide whether it’s manageable or I need to try something else.

The next order of business should be to see how the games are working, and so far I installed Morrowind and Divinity II: Developer’s Cut. I think I’ll be trying to play something, not just install all and see if they work, but if anything will fail at some point, I can use XP Mode or, if somehow even that causes issues, I can install Vista on the second HDD, with all the old drivers, which I kept.

While for a while I was saying that reading this makes me think less poorly about my own writing, it seemed to improve somewhat in the later parts, though editing issues have been obvious throughout. It’s a very light read, featuring action and scenes that don’t quite stand up to scrutiny, the likely consequences often being brushed aside, but there seems to be little you can actively dislike and it can pull you in somewhat, particularly in the later parts.
It is interesting to see the fresh take on such a well-known story, and the author managed to avoid making a complete mockery of it. Because of what I said above about ignoring consequences and not standing up to scrutiny, I’d still consider it as something of a parody, but the reasons why it gets that third star have to do with some of the later portions and the fact that it can be taken as a somewhat bold, if rather amateurish, reshaping of a myth.

Rating: 3/5

After yet another HDD failure, I sent the shop an e-mail detailing the service history and asking what can be done. I was considering asking for another model as replacement, but waited for a reply before going that far, so I didn’t at first. However, instead of replying to my message, they apparently tracked down the last service request made for that account and called dad, as his number was listed on that. They didn’t even e-mail after he didn’t answer at first, obviously not knowing what it was about, so after I told him we sort of took it back and forth, with them telling him what can be worked out, him saying he’ll think about it and telling me what they said, me at first telling him what I’m thinking should be done next, then just panicking and not knowing what to do or say anymore, making things even more confused…
In the end, they offered the money back for this HDD if I’ll take it back and buy a replacement from them instead, suggesting the 1 Tb Western Digital Black for a mere 4 RON, so less than €1, after the discount, and saying it will also be possible to get the new one first and hand the failed one in a few days later, if I want to make sure all data is saved, assuming it’ll hold long enough for that. However, I have nothing to do with the 500 Gb I have, much less with 1 Tb, and I also saw a small but worrying number of complaints about repeated failures of the 1 Tb model, while for the 500 Gb one I didn’t see any failure mentioned or listed, though a couple of people said they ended up with some that were dead on arrival, probably after being damaged during shipping, since they don’t come in any sort of case or box. So it was left hanging once again, with me looking into other options and dad asking why don’t I just order everything I meant to order a few months from now and get it over with.

With that in mind and after various panic attacks generated by the situation changing and me needing to make decisions quickly while at the same time worrying about losing data in case I’ll be so unlucky that this old HDD I’m using as backup will decide it had enough as well, I settled on that 500 Gb Western Digital Black as the new backup HDD, a 250 Gb Western Digital VelociRaptor as the new primary HDD at least for the time being, a Noctua NF-P12 PWM and a regular NF-P12 as the new case fans, plus a legal Windows 7 Ultimate, as strange it is to have your operating system legally purchased around here. With the direction Microsoft has chosen for the development of Windows now, considering Windows 8, I reckon that, once I’ll get used to it, I’ll be sticking to that one the same way many others are still sticking to XP.
Of course, I did look for an SSD, but what I wanted, namely a 240 Gb, or at least 180 Gb, Intel 520, was unavailable here, so I had to give up and, as I said, for the time being stick to the Raptor as primary, leaving the SSD for next year, when I want to upgrade the other components as well, if they’ll still last that long, seeing as they’re almost five years old already. At the same time, getting that regular NF-P12 was obviously a mistake, seeing as the PWM version can be plugged into a 3-pin connector as well, but I didn’t see that being specified anywhere and seeing as I never got case fans separately before, I just got what matched what I have on my motherboard, namely one with a 3-pin connector and one with a 4-pin one.

While the Raptor and the Windows should be coming on Tuesday, I got the Black and the fans last evening. Opened the case, put in the HDD, then started struggling with the fans, not to mention getting annoyed when I noticed I should have gotten two of the better kind after all. Eventually had to ask dad to help me take the old fans out and put the new ones in, which had little to do with IT and a lot to do with being stronger and more stubborn than certain screws and parts of the case that refused to cooperate in any way, and then also had to figure out a way to make room for all the cables with a third HDD added for the time being, especially seeing as one of them is IDE and takes up a lot of space.
We struggled with that for hours, eventually putting everything back together after midnight, but that was only the beginning, as what I got when I turned the computer back on was continuous beeping and an apparent freeze while trying to detect the new HDD. I crashed completely, asked dad to come back and he started going bit by bit, asking what this or that is and what may be wrong while I basically just curled in a ball on the floor, repeating that I ruin everything, shouldn’t have gotten anything and that I’ll be left without a computer. Also found myself crying a little, likely thanks to the fact that I wasn’t alone, so I guess I’m thankful for that at least, knowing that it’s next to impossible for me to cry when alone.
After regaining some shred of control, I started working it out bit by bit, trying to figure out the reasons while dad was available to get his hands in there and do things if I couldn’t get myself to touch anything anymore. We realize that the beeping is caused by the fans not starting, so I gave up on my attempt to use the Y-cable the PWM one comes with to plug both into the 4-pin connector and, after the next couple of attempts to connect them in a more proper way also resulted in failures, gave in and plugged the PWM one into the 3-pin connector and the regular one into the 4-pin one. Seems the wrongest possible way, but it makes them work just fine, so I’ll leave them like that now.
That still did nothing about the new HDD, and various attempts to change BIOS settings didn’t help either, but after disconnecting it I could check that everything else was still fine, so left it like that and called it quits for the night, verifying that the backup was correct by comparing directly with what was on this IDE one. Hadn’t done that before, simply turning the failing drive off after the problems started and hoping it’ll still work enough to be able to make this comparison after I’ll copy everything to the new one, but I got it done then, just to be sure.

Today, after waking up, getting some things done on-line and deciding on a course of action while I wasn’t quite as panicked yet, I pulled out all the cables again, to make room, switched the ones that went into the new HDD and the failing one, also changed some BIOS settings, and managed to put in the jumper that makes the new HDD work in SATA 2 mode. I had checked that before and saw plenty of people saying that, even though it normally works in SATA 3 mode, they did not have to put a jumper on pins 5 and 6 and activate compatibility mode in order to get it to work on a motherboard that only supports SATA 2, so I didn’t do it either, but apparently that was the problem, because after I did that it worked. Of course, it wasn’t the only thing I did, but had tried those BIOS changes last night as well, and the connection was clearly not the problem, seeing as it continued to see the failing drive after switching the cables. The problem now is that the Raptor is SATA 3 as well and, if it’ll be like this one and not come with any jumpers of its own, I’ll have to look and see where can I find or, if it comes to it, how can I make one, because I only had this one available, which came with the failing HDD.

Unfortunately, after copying the data from this IDE HDD, which I’ll be giving to dad after this, to the new one and thoroughly checking it, the failing one decided it had too much and stopped being detected while I was trying to delete things from it. Also wanted to overwrite it before sending it in, but was just deleting the files, as a first step, when it simply vanished, not even letting me finish that. Now it may be a way for it to protect itself from further damage, so may be possible to “revive” it enough to try again, but if not, I guess that’s that. It is a rather uncomfortable prospect, sending it in with data still on it, but I guess there’s very little real risk if it can’t normally be read anymore.