First post from Android blogger app

Wow. A simple interface with all the basic features. With Swype,blogging is fun :D

Installing Windows XP in Dell Laptops

This topic is dedicated for the people who have tried but unsuccessful in installing Windows XP in their Dell laptops. Dell people strongly oppose installing XP in a Dell laptop which comes with Vista. So don't consult yo customer care for installing XP in yo machine. I have been trying to install it for quite a long time and i just found the method. I know i'm late cos Windows 7 is gonna release in a short while and it will shut the holes in Vista. Seriously Windows 7 rocks!

I have a DELL XPS M1530 which is an year old, so i took the risk of removing Vista. When i Googled about installing xp in dell laptops, i found a tool called nLite. This tool allows an user to extract the XP ISO and it allows us to add some software and then build the ISO. I could easily get all the drivers for my laptop for windows xp. Just Googling will do that.

Later, i found that those drivers could be installed even after installing XP. Basically, Dell gives SATA hard disks which operates in AHCI mode. XP does not have AHCI drivers and so it doesn't get installed in the laptop. So the hard disk operation mode must be changed. There are only two operations: AHCI and ATA. It is enough if you change it to ATA mode. You can find this option in BIOS setting. You need to disable the flash memory too before changing to ATA. Once you are done with it, then you can boot yo XP cd and install!

Unfortunately, i couldn't get the AHCI drivers for XP. So it still works in ATA mode:(. But i don't have any problems:). So try out and enjoy XP in yo laptop!

26/11

            U may wonder wat does 26/11 mean here, as my blog title suggests that this is a tech blog. Well right, this is a tech blog, and i dedicate this post to my fellow countrymen who lost their lives in this Mumbai attack. I salute the NSG's and Policemen who fought against the bad guys bravely, for 3 continuous days.

            This post is about how technology helped the bad guys. It is said that the bad guys made use of GPS and Google Earth. GPS is the acronym Global Positioning System. GPS helps you to reach a place anywhere in this world. If suppose a group of people get lost, while travelling towards Mumbai in a boat, they can use GPS to find the right direction. GPS can also be used to locate your current positio

        

            Well you must be thinking now, how GPS works. A GPS reciever recieves the signals from satellite and gives the information to the user. A GPS reciever recieves information from more than 4 satellites. The reciever decides from which satellite it has to recieve the signals. It selects the satellite which provides the strongest signals at that location from the 30 satellites available exclusively availabale for GPS. The reciever gets the signals from the orbit of the satellites and gives information about the locations to the user using a method called geometric trilateration. The GPS can show you routes to travel, if you set your destination.

 

            The next one is Google Earth. This is a common software which everyone would have used. This software gives the images which are captured in the satellite. These images are placed on a virtual sphere. Earlier they used to show only important landmarks but nowadays they provide all the details like the shops present in a street and sensitive details like military installations. They provide 360 degree view of streets in USA and Japan from the ground level. Using google earth and GPS, travelling to any unknown place is not a hectic task today.

 

            People have started blaming that advancement of technology is the reason for this attack. Well the answer is partly right. The fact is the bad guys have learnt to use the technology. We people are still beginners in tech. The same GPS and Google Earth can be used to trace the bad guys activities and capture them. So we are not supposed to blame the tech for this attack. If technology is used constructively,no terrorists can exist in this earth!

Ubuntu on e-mac!!

Installing a linux version in a e-mac is a easy process if the right method is known ;). Let me describe about e-mac first. E-mac is a version of apple computers. It is basically used for education purpose. So its termed as e-mac(education mac). E-mac has a power pc processor, so normal versions of linux wont work in e-mac,cos the normal versions of linux work only on an intel processor. So u need to get a linux version for power pc processor.

This was a task given to me n my friend in my college. We had to install a version of linux in this e-mac and v had to make it as dual boot with the existing Tiger OS X. We found out an ubuntu 5.04 version for power pc. Luckily a copy of tat OS was available in my college. So we grabbed it n booted it("C" key should be pressed to boot from a CD-ROM). There were only 2 partitions in tat e-mac. As it was a test system, we took the risk n selected a partition randomly n started installing in tat partition. Unfortunately it was the partition in which Tiger OS X was present :(. Due to lots of scratches in the cd the installation hanged at 16%, showing tat "Retrieving zlib1g". So we had to switch off the power n turn on the e-mac again. We were shocked to see tat e-mac had no OS. Tiger was crashed. But tat was not the end. We were encouraged to start again.

We got an another copy of Ubuntu 5.04 for power pc n proceeded. This time we did it successfully. We allocated 10GB for linux in the entire 40GB hard disk. No change in the procdure of installing linix. It is same as installing it on a intel machine. Atlast the installation was over n we were able to boot Ubuntu successfully :). Here comes the twist. The GUI didn't work. So we googled n found a solution for this bug which i'll share it here. Here's the solution for it.

• Press Alt-Ctrl-F1 to start a console session.
• Run the command wget http://homepage.univie.ac.at/georg.koe./XF86Config-4.emac700nvidia.working
• Try the above command if u have a working internet connection.
• Or else follow this: Open the file Xorg.conf in vim editor and modify under the section monitor as follows.
• Section "Monitor"

   Identifier "monitor1"
  

•  VendorName "Apple"
  

• ModelName "HiRes Display 1152x864"
  

• HorizSync 30.0-112.0
  

• VertRefresh 50.0-160.0
  

• #emac
  

• ModeLine "800x600" 112 800 816 824 840 600 616 624 640 -hsync -vsync

• ModeLine "1152x864" 100 1152 1173 1269 1440 768 769 772 800 +vsync +vsync
  

• ModeLine "1024x768" 100 1024 1108 1280 1408 768 768 780 796 +hsync +vsync
  

• ModeLine "1280x960" 100 1280 1288 1392 1664 1024 1027 1030 1064  

• EndSection
• Under the section screen change the monitor name as "monitor 1"

Finally we did it. The GUI worked!!. It was a "Grand Success";). Few drawbacks r there with apple keyboard n mouse. The right click didnt work. Instead F12 was used as the right click. Then the eject key present in the keyboard didn't work.

The next part was to install tiger OS X with ubuntu as a dual boot. So we booted the Tiger OS cd n started the installation. Unfortunately Tiger OS didn't detect Ubuntu n so it fomatted all the partitions. Tiger got installed smoothly, we didn't have any problem in installing Tiger OS X. After it got over we installed ubuntu again n followed the above procedure n atlast we did it. We created a dual boot n we escaped too ;)!!!.