Pieter

Power Saving RAID Controller (Continued)

This post continues from my last post on power saving RAID controllers. It turns out the Adaptec 5 series controller are not that workstation friendly. I was testing with Western Digital drives; 1TB Caviar Black WD1001FALS, 2TB Caviar Green WD20EADS, and 1TB RE3 WD1002FBYS. I also wanted to test with the new 2TB RE4-GP WD2002FYPSContinue reading “Power Saving RAID Controller (Continued)”

DELL 2408WFP loosing settings on power cycle

In my last post I discussed the calibration of my DELL 2408WFP monitors. After calibration, and changing the monitor settings, the monitors looked pretty good, but I later found that the monitor colors looked all weird again. It turns out that the monitors reverted to their default settings, invalidating the calibration. It seems to meContinue reading “DELL 2408WFP loosing settings on power cycle”

DELL 2408WFP and Spyder 3 Elite

I upgraded my vista Ultimate x64 workstation to a dual monitor setup using two 24″ DELL 2408WFP displays connected to an ATI HD4850 video card. I immediately noticed that the colors were unnaturally bright and over-saturated. I had a similar problem on another workstation with a 30″ DELL 3007WFP-HC display. My original 3007WFP was great,Continue reading “DELL 2408WFP and Spyder 3 Elite”

Amazon Unbox on x64 Vista

While shopping on Amazon I noticed that they were offering the Pilot of the Showtime series Nurse Jackie in HD for free, so I decided to give it a try. The install (version 2.0.1.95) went smoothly, and the 1.3GB downloaded also completed pretty quickly, and I watched the show. Ok, now I wanted to stopContinue reading “Amazon Unbox on x64 Vista”

Power Saving SATA RAID Controller

I’ve been a longtime user of Adaptec SATA RAID cards (3805, 5805, 51245), but over the years I’ve become more energy saving conscious, and the Adaptec controllers did not support Windows power management. My workstations are normally running in the “Balanced” power mode so that they will go to sleep after an hour, but sometimesContinue reading “Power Saving SATA RAID Controller”

How to install SQL Server 2008 on Windows Server 2008 R2 RC

I was trying to install SQL Server 2008 on Windows Server 2008 R2 RC. But, when I launch SETUP.EXE, Windows warns me that SQL Server is not compatible with Windows Server.If I ignore the warning, the install proceeds but then fails to install .NET 3.5. After a little searching and experimentation I found a wayContinue reading “How to install SQL Server 2008 on Windows Server 2008 R2 RC”

2008 VW Touareg Tire Pressure Discrepancy

I drive a 2008 VW Touareg with stock 17″ Pirelli P255/60R17 Scorpion STR tires. I noticed the VW recommended tire pressure was 2PSI higher than the tire’s maximum pressure rating. The tire pressure sticker on the driver door indicated 46PSI, while the tire wall indicated a maximum tire pressure of 44PSI. Overinflating tires is potentiallyContinue reading “2008 VW Touareg Tire Pressure Discrepancy”

Archived Content and Templates

I have now moved all old archived content from my website to this blog, the old pages contain links to the equivalent blog postings. I know the copy-and-paste blog formatting is not very elegant, but it will do. I was using the standard Blogger “Tic-Tac” template, but the readable area was not wide enough toContinue reading “Archived Content and Templates”

Broken Symbol Proxy

This post is about Microsoft Debugging Tools for Windows, symbol servers, and symbol proxy servers. You can read my posts about this problem on the Microsoft WinDbg group, and on the Google Chromium group. We run several symbol servers, and a single symbol proxy server that provides transparent access to all our symbols servers, asContinue reading “Broken Symbol Proxy”

DxO Optics Pro and Adobe Lightroom on Vista x64

I bought my first SLR camera, a Canon EOS 20D, and my first wide angle lens, a Canon EF-S 10-22, several years ago. Amongst the many articles and reviews I read, online and in magazines, I came across a product called DxO Optics Pro, a product that would supposedly correct, amongst other things, lens distortion.Continue reading “DxO Optics Pro and Adobe Lightroom on Vista x64”