XP
Tuesday, November 25th, 2008
by alphaxion
When the change to Vista came it sounded the deathknell for a single UI element that I loved.
Within windows explorer you could enable something known as the Status bar, along this you would see information such as what security zone you were in, how much space you had left, how many files were in a folder and what size of data this represented.
It was this ability to see not only how much space you had left but how big in terms of storage capacity the folder I had open was consuming that I loved - system info at a glance that was germain to my task.
Not even OSX showed you this information, going out of its way to hide how big a folder is and breaking up the information as to how much space you have left into little locations across applications and folder views.
The only thing I wished it did was count up the values of the folders within that folder, but this would have made explorer very slow. I wonder if this is why browsing the file system in vista is very slow because this functionality was added, but for the tooltip hover instead of the status bar!
My hopes for this to make a return in win7 were dashed when I opened up explorer and it was just the same as vista.
Am I alone in wishing for this little UI element to return? Do you know of a way of returning this to vista/win7? If so, would you be willing to share? 
Surely I can’t be the only person who mourns it’s loss?!
Wednesday, October 15th, 2008
by alphaxion
So, the scene is that I install XP within Virtual PC/server and all is fine.
I can see the outside world, the drivers are working but I need to install the VM additions pack to wrest control of the mouse from the caffeine addled monster that currently does as it pleases with it.
It goes ahead without problems and reboots. As soon as I’m back at the logon screen, something is very wrong. Checking out the graphics I’m apparently locked into 800 x 600 and 4 bit graphics.
Wha?!
VM additions is meant to fix this, not cause it! The solution that worked for me? Install SP 3.
Once I did that, the screen went back to normal! If you’ve had this problem too, I’d love to know so I can get an idea of any commonality.
To help out, here’s the model number of the physical host machine I was using:
HP Proliant DL360 G5, packing an ATI ES1000 integrated graphics.
OS: 32bit Windows server 2003 standard R2 with sp2 installed and all windows updates up to this date in time.
Sunday, September 14th, 2008
by alphaxion
Are you having problems with your network adapter after you wiped vista from your HP 6720s laptop and installed XP?
Does it connect but not grab an IP or won’t seem to allow any traffic to flow if it does manage to get an IP or you set a static one?
Occationally notice that you get an “Error Code 12″ within device manager?
Then the problem is the same as mine, and the solution to it can be found at this address.
Basically, the problem is that you have a BIOS version older than F.03 (09/04/2007) - warning, american date format
Hopefully this should save your hair from becoming bunches in your hands as after a quick flash of the BIOS and all should be right with the world once again