LSI turns their back on Green

I previously blogged here and here on my research into finding a power saving RAID controllers. I have been using LSI MegaRAID SAS 9280-4i4e controllers in my Windows 7 workstations and LSI MegaRAID SAS 9280-8e controllers Windows Server 2008 R2 servers. These controllers work great, my workstations go to sleep and wake up, and inContinue reading “LSI turns their back on Green”

Storage Spaces Leaves Me Empty

I was very intrigued when I found out about Storage Spaces and ReFS being introduced in Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8. But now that I’ve spent some time with it, I’m left disappointed, and I will not be trusting my precious data with either of these features, just yet.   Microsoft publicly announced StorageContinue reading “Storage Spaces Leaves Me Empty”

Dyslexic Intel RSTe Driver

I encounter one problem after another running Windows 8 and Server 2012 on the dual Xeon E5 Intel C600 chipset based SuperMicro 7047A-T and 7047A-73 SuperWorkstation machines. I will say that this is really not representative of my Windows 8 experience in general, as all other machines I installed on worked fine with the in-boxContinue reading “Dyslexic Intel RSTe Driver”

Windows 8 VIDEO_TDR_FAILURE Madness

I finally figured out why I kept on getting VIDEO_TDR_FAILURE BSOD’s when installing Windows 8 on my SuperMicro workstations. It turns out that the problem goes away when I use a PCIe slot associated with CPU #1, instead of a slot associated with CPU #2. Some history on my adventures with Windows 8 and SuperMicroContinue reading “Windows 8 VIDEO_TDR_FAILURE Madness”

Windows 8 Install Crash With NVidia Quadro 5000

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 workstationsContinue reading “Windows 8 Install Crash With NVidia Quadro 5000”

Windows 8 Install Hangs Booting From LSI 2308 SAS Controller

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 of the LSI 2038 SAS controller, and a BSOD when using a Quadro 5000 video card (more on that inContinue reading “Windows 8 Install Hangs Booting From LSI 2308 SAS Controller”

SuperMicro Beta BIOS supports Windows 8 and Server 2012

In a previous post I reported that my SuperMicro SuperWorkstation 7047A-T failed to install Windows 8 or Windows Server 2012 due to a 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 fromContinue reading “SuperMicro Beta BIOS supports Windows 8 and Server 2012”

Debugging Windows 8 Install BSOD

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 parametersContinue reading “Debugging Windows 8 Install BSOD”

Windows 8 and Server 2012 on SuperMicro results in ACPI_BIOS_ERROR BSOD

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 storageContinue reading “Windows 8 and Server 2012 on SuperMicro results in ACPI_BIOS_ERROR BSOD”

Rotation confuses face recognition

I have around fifty thousand digital photos in my library, and it has become impractical to browse through them looking for some event, or some place, or some person. So other than archiving, there really is no value in collecting photos if you can’t go back and find the ones you are looking for. AContinue reading “Rotation confuses face recognition”