Problem

I got Windows 8 RTM installed on my two SuperMicro SuperWorkstation machines, with a bit of trouble along the way, but nothing I could not work around. But, I ran into a problem with NVidia Quadro 5000 cards causing a VIDEO_TDR_FAILURE BSOD during the Windows 8 install process. I was running my two workstations with ATI FirePro V7900 graphics cards, but I decided I wanted a bit more rendering horsepower. I wanted a card that had a good balance between modern architecture, great 2D performance, good 3D performance, OpenCL or CUDA support, and reasonable power consumption. I found the Tom’s Hardware Workstation Graphics 2012 benchmark site to be very informative, and I decided that the NVidia Quadro 5000 was a very good choice. ...

I’ve previously posted about problems installing Windows 8 on SuperMicro machines, and that SuperMicro released a Beta BIOS that solved the install problems. I’ve since run into two more problems; the install hanging when booting off the LSI 2308 SAS controller, and a BSOD when using a Quadro 5000 video card (more on that in a later post). I have two SuperWorkstation machines, a 7047A-T using an X9DAi motherboard, and a 7047A-73 using an X9DA7 motherboard. ...

In a previous post I reported that my SuperMicro SuperWorkstation 7047A-T failed to install Windows 8 or Windows Server 2012 due to an ACPI_BIOS_ERROR. I contacted SuperMicro support, and I was informed that new BIOS releases are on their way that will support Windows 8 and Server 2012. This morning I received an email from SuperMicro, with a new Beta BIOS for the X9DAi motherboard used in the 7047A-T. The new BIOS allowed me to install Windows 8 and Server 2012. ...

In my last post I described how to prevent Windows from automatically restarting when encountering a BSOD during the OS install process. This allowed me to see the ACPI_BIOS_ERROR fault code while installing Windows 8 on my new SuperMicro workstation. The new Windows 8 BSOD page looks friendly, but no longer displays any error parameters other than the main fault code. In order to get additional details of the crash, I had to hook up a kernel debugger to the machine. Windows 8 adds USB3 and TCPIP kernel debug support, and I will describe how I used the TCPIP network option to capture details of the crash. ...

I ran out of disk space on my development workstation, all those VM images add up. The machine has four drive bays, and all four have 3TB drives. I can replace the 3TB drives with 4TB drives, but migrating the RAID5 array will be time consuming and risky. I can add an external SAS storage enclosure, but they do not power down when the machine goes to sleep. So I looked at buying a new machine with more drive bays. ...

I’ve been using CrashPlan as an online backup solution for quite some time, and it works really well. I like the fact that I can subscribe to the consumer plan, with almost 3.5TB of data backed up, and that the backup client installs on a server OS. Many of the other “unlimited” backup providers I tested have restrictions in place that make such a setup impossible. CrashPlan sends email notifications about backup status, and I noticed that something was wrong with the backup: ...

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 me that as soon as my PC goes to sleep, or the monitors go into power saving mode, or power off, that on turning back on they revert to default settings. ...

How difficult can it be to transfer a .name domain? I was reading an article where it was noted that .name names can now be used for OpenID registrations. With a little more research I found that the sites only supported new registrations, unfortunately they did not support transfers. Several years ago when the .name domains were new and the in thing to do, I registered my pieter.viljoen.name domain and pieter@viljoen.name with Register.com. ...