74 replies to this topic

[mwright]

Hi,

Is there any kind soul out there who still has an Advent 4211 running XP that could make a recovery USB stick for me?

Failing that, does anyone still have the stick that I could copy?

I managed to trash my recovery stick somehow and now I need it to recover the advent!

Heres hoping.

Cheers
Mike

[mwright]

Its OK - I managed to download it

[pd.ryder]

Assuming all's ok now...?

If not, let me know -- I have what you need

[mwright]

pd.ryder, on May 2 2009, 07:17, said:

Assuming all's ok now...?

If not, let me know -- I have what you need

Yep - 4211 back to lovely XP as required.

Much better now - was getting fed up of Windows 7.

Cheers anyway

[Makes mental note to make several copies of stick!]

[pd.ryder]

Have you MSI'd it with the BIOS upgrade? Advent's BIOS doesn't include the overclocking feature which does come with the MSI version. I'm running the machine as bog-standard (1GB RAM) with the MSI v1.9 BIOS and can o/c to 24% which equates to 2.1GHz CPU speed - all stabe, no crashes at all.

[mwright]

pd.ryder, on May 2 2009, 09:33, said:

Have you MSI'd it with the BIOS upgrade? Advent's BIOS doesn't include the overclocking feature which does come with the MSI version. I'm running the machine as bog-standard (1GB RAM) with the MSI v1.9 BIOS and can o/c to 24% which equates to 2.1GHz CPU speed - all stabe, no crashes at all.

Yep

1.9 Bios
2Gig Ram
Hyper-mega-big battery!
Xp
Ubuntu UNR
hmmmm - probably something else as well!

[pd.ryder]

I must admit to being rather cowardly when it comes to cracking the case to stuff an extra 1GB RAM in the slot, plus, I can't get on with Linux in any configuration really. I can't really understand why anyone would want to tbh. I can't see the advantages from where I'm sitting...

Glad you're sorted anyway.

TTFN

[nliwilson]

A rant or 2 & appeal for help.

pd.ryder, on May 2 2009, 18:04, said:

I can't get on with Linux in any configuration really. I can't really understand why anyone would want to tbh. I can't see the advantages from where I'm sitting...

Normally at this point someone would jump in and list 101 technical reasons why a good Linux distribution is better than Windows. Unfortunately the info is usually so dry and above the technical level of anyone still lumbering themselves with Windows that everyone's eyes glaze over and they stop listening, so let's try it in strait-forward plain English;    Windows, any version of Windows, is a poor quality product for which you pay an obscene premium. The need for ever grater hardware 'power' and indeed the need to over-clock for most people comes down to the sheer, ridiculous inefficiency of Windows many strata of old code on top of old code, on top of old code. If you want to know what your PC is actually capable of you have to use something other than Windows, I have an old 933MHz PIII based desktop with just 512MiB RAM and for the life of me I can't come up with a good excuse to upgrade! More to the point that's running a vanilla install of Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope). I'm using a 'vanilla', in other words on modified, install because there's just no need to bother with a custom kernel Etc. (and because I don't feel the need to prove anything technically...). As if Ubuntu and Xubuntu 'Jaunty' weren't good enough you should try Jaunty 'Netbook Remix' running on an Intel Atom based machine...

If the PIII machine doesn't prove that not Windows is a good idea guests in my home have a 450MHz G4 Apple Cube (admittedly with 1.5GiB RAM and an Open GL 2 capable, firmware hacked, graphics card) running OS X to use for web/document/mail/network media playback that most guests assume from it's performance is a modern machine. Much of the performance difference is down to one simple thing, the majority of those cool hardware processing technologies offered by your PC's chipset are completely wasted because Windows simply doesn't use them.

This is bordering on dry and technical again so let's go back to basics, the reason I don't use Windows for personal use, even putting aside the security nightmare that is Windows, is simply that life is to short! Every task takes so b****** long with Windows, even starting it up takes an age! I've migrated many people to Mac and/or Linux over the years and the experience is always the same, after 2 - 3 months actually using 'not Windows' day to day (as opposed to installing it, finding it's a little unfamiliar, getting worried and running back to Windows) they always end up using a Windows PC for one reason or another, only to find that the time it takes to cold boot it (to a point where you can actually use it, not just to the point that it teases you by showing you your desktop) they all end up asking themselves "How did I put up with this for so long!?" "OMG, everything takes so much time and hassle with Windows!". Many people using a Linux PC or Mac for the first time get frustrated because they can't find certain controls/control panels in the GUI and when the look it up they find said controls are in fact available but you have to install a GUI for it or use a command prompt, this confuses a lot of people who can't understand why these controls aren't readily available as they are in Windows. The reason for this is very simple; You only need these controls readily available in Windows! In OS X or a Linux distribution those controls aren't readily available simply because defaults, set-up wizards and automation actually work, a concept alien to Windows sufferers *cough* sorry users.

Actually use Linux or OS X day to day rather than just looking at it and it's not so much that you won't want to go back to Windows, it's more the case that you won't be able to go back because you won't be able to face the ridiculous wasted time and hassle just doing day to day tasks with Windows. To put it another way most people have no idea just how shoddy Microsoft's products are because they have no real world, day to day (not just having a look at) experience of using anything else.

Anyway, enough ranting (about Windows), I got to this discussion because I have to use Windows professionally and need a recovery image, the only one I can find to torrent is the older 2GB image and I'm looking for the updated image? Does anyone know where I can find one?

It seems DSGi's product development team don't know how to set up a Win PE recovery partition properly, I mean what kind of complete idiot creates a bootable Windows recovery system that can't boot if Windows needs recovering!? Well actually I can tell you from personal experience! A few years ago my colleague and I, whilst working in they're Nottingham call centre, where approached by the product development team wanting to create a hidden recovery system, for the Apple PowerBooks the business support department loaned to business customers who's Mac's where out of action, that could be run quickly in from of the customer. What we came up with was a simple, Linux + HDD imaging tool + BASH script + drivers + HDD image system installed on a secure Linux file system that OS X can't see without compiling file system support from source and booted from an engineers CD. However when we explained how to do this and how simple it would be, we looked around to see a sea of blank faces! DSGi, they really are a cowboy operation!

[mwright]

nliwilson, on May 12 2009, 13:15, said:

A rant or 2 & appeal for help.


Anyway, enough ranting (about Windows), I got to this discussion because I have to use Windows professionally and need a recovery image, the only one I can find to torrent is the older 2GB image and I'm looking for the updated image? Does anyone know where I can find one?

Is there another image - I have the 2gig one.
Check your PM in a few minutes

Edited by mwright, 12 May 2009 - 01:44 PM.

[mwright]

nliwilson, on May 12 2009, 13:15, said:

A rant or 2 & appeal for help.

Normally at this point someone would jump in and list 101 technical reasons why a good Linux distribution is better than Windows. Unfortunately the info is usually so dry and above the technical level of anyone still lumbering themselves with Windows that everyone's eyes glaze over and they stop listening, so let's try it in strait-forward plain English;    Windows, any version of Windows, is a poor quality product for which you pay an obscene premium. The need for ever grater hardware 'power' and indeed the need to over-clock for most people comes down to the sheer, ridiculous inefficiency of Windows many strata of old code on top of old code, on top of old code. If you want to know what your PC is actually capable of you have to use something other than Windows, I have an old 933MHz PIII based desktop with just 512MiB RAM and for the life of me I can't come up with a good excuse to upgrade! More to the point that's running a vanilla install of Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope). I'm using a 'vanilla', in other words on modified, install because there's just no need to bother with a custom kernel Etc. (and because I don't feel the need to prove anything technically...). As if Ubuntu and Xubuntu 'Jaunty' weren't good enough you should try Jaunty 'Netbook Remix' running on an Intel Atom based machine...

Thing is - it is still not 100% there as a desktop environment. There are still too many "little" things missing for it to "just work".

For me, neither of the printers I have are supported at all - can't even make them print rubbish let alone anything sensible!

It runs the battery down quicker than windows - I don't think the ECO/turbo switch works at all.

On my advent, the wifi/bt toggle does not work properly under Ubuntu. I have to make sure that I boot Windows first and then turn on the bt and wifi and then reboot to linux to make sure everything will work.

I admit that it found my mobile phoes internet connection (via USB) without me having to do anything - that was impressive. But, of course, I can't sync my phone using Linx.

I was impressed that it foumd the battery in my wireless mouse and told me what the status if that was.

Unfortunately the basic things still do not work properly.

[pd.ryder]

Ok -- it's gotta be worth a go and to see if I can live with it for a few weeks before deciding to scrap / avoid it.

I reckon the UNR would be the one to go for on this 4211, so I'm off to the Wiki to gather the bits I need and try a dual boot install alongside XP. The wiki says it all works with this Wind U100 clone so I'll assume there are no driver issues and wifi, BT, webcam etc all function out of the box.

I use FF3 as it is anyway so browsing won't be any different. If I can live with the email and IM clients and its capable of playing my HD x264 and avi vid files out to the 40" Sony then I should be happy. I guess it'll network to my ext HDD and printer in much the same way as XP does, but I guess it'll be fun finding out.

Here goes...

Oh, nearly forgot -- the Advent "Boot Files" I have are 1.6GB, came off a CDROM sent by those lovely people at The Tech Guys and was / is designed (I'm told) to copy to a USB stick for post death-rattle recovery of the 4211 XP variant. You're welcome to it if it's any help. I've no idea of its release date tho.

[nliwilson]

mwright, on May 12 2009, 13:49, said:

Thing is - it is still not 100% there as a desktop environment. There are still too many "little" things missing for it to "just work".

For me, neither of the printers I have are supported at all - can't even make them print rubbish let alone anything sensible!

It runs the battery down quicker than windows - I don't think the ECO/turbo switch works at all.

On my advent, the wifi/bt toggle does not work properly under Ubuntu. I have to make sure that I boot Windows first and then turn on the bt and wifi and then reboot to linux to make sure everything will work.

I admit that it found my mobile phoes internet connection (via USB) without me having to do anything - that was impressive. But, of course, I can't sync my phone using Linx.

I was impressed that it foumd the battery in my wireless mouse and told me what the status if that was.

Unfortunately the basic things still do not work properly.

What version of Ubuntu are you using, the WiFi/BlueTooth keyboard shortcut works fine for me? As do power options and every printer I've tried for that matter? Depending on phone's firmware you may well find there's no specific app to sync it because most phones comply with the universal SyncML standard so can be set up to sync without a device specific program. If the phone runs Windows CE (probably Microsoft's biggest P*** take out of it's customers) or Palm OS sync software is provided as standard. To be fare I did stop recommending Ubuntu for several releases as they kept releasing new versions without proper testing but that's changed in a big way with Jaunty (9.04). If power consumption is an issue you may want to try Xubuntu, XFCE is a very friendly GUI anyway but it's also less demanding (of the computer) than Gnome.
Obviously there are a lot of linux distributions out there, not just Ubuntu and it's derivatives. For the ultimate in minimal demands on the CPU/GPU for the sake of battery life you could use one of the quirky mini distro's such as Puppy or DSL but they really aren't as sorted.

[nliwilson]

mwright, on May 12 2009, 13:43, said:

Is there another image - I have the 2gig one.
Check your PM in a few minutes

Yah, after running the recovery backup creator update, recovery backup creates a 2.8(ish)GB image. I'll download the 2GB as you suggested, mainly because I object to paying £35 for recovery CD's when 1: the WebBook's in warranty and 2: recovery won't boot because of DSGi's mistake.
If you browse the recovery partition you'll find they where unprofessional enough to leave they're build log's on there, an amusing read if your so minded...

[nliwilson]

pd.ryder, on May 12 2009, 14:15, said:

Ok -- it's gotta be worth a go and to see if I can live with it for a few weeks before deciding to scrap / avoid it.

I reckon the UNR would be the one to go for on this 4211, so I'm off to the Wiki to gather the bits I need and try a dual boot install alongside XP. The wiki says it all works with this Wind U100 clone so I'll assume there are no driver issues and wifi, BT, webcam etc all function out of the box.

I use FF3 as it is anyway so browsing won't be any different. If I can live with the email and IM clients and its capable of playing my HD x264 and avi vid files out to the 40" Sony then I should be happy. I guess it'll network to my ext HDD and printer in much the same way as XP does, but I guess it'll be fun finding out.

Here goes...

Oh, nearly forgot -- the Advent "Boot Files" I have are 1.6GB, came off a CDROM sent by those lovely people at The Tech Guys and was / is designed (I'm told) to copy to a USB stick for post death-rattle recovery of the 4211 XP variant. You're welcome to it if it's any help. I've no idea of its release date tho.

Cool, I'd be interested to know how you get on, possibly a different discussion thread though?
As a matter of interest did The TechGuys (who constructively dismissed they're entire "Tech" staff a couple of years ago) charge you for the CD(s)? On they're site it tells me they'll charge me £35 to fix they're mistake?

[pd.ryder]

No they bloody well did not!! My first 4211 failed to function straight out of the box. No access to the recovery nor nuffink. Basically, a dead box of buttons and wires. So they sent me a Recovery Disk which took an age to arrive and by that point I'd screamed blue murder at them and demanded they replace the netbook with one that worked.

Both the disk and the 'new' 4211 turned up on the same day; the 4211 worked and I've not had any reason to use the disk yet.

I'll post once I've installed UNR (if I can get on the net and it hasn't melted or burst into flames... I'm the eternal optimist )

[nliwilson]

pd.ryder, on May 12 2009, 15:03, said:

No they bloody well did not!! My first 4211 failed to function straight out of the box. No access to the recovery nor nuffink. Basically, a dead box of buttons and wires. So they sent me a Recovery Disk which took an age to arrive and by that point I'd screamed blue murder at them and demanded they replace the netbook with one that worked.

Both the disk and the 'new' 4211 turned up on the same day; the 4211 worked and I've not had any reason to use the disk yet.

I'll post once I've installed UNR (if I can get on the net and it hasn't melted or burst into flames... I'm the eternal optimist )

Cheers buddy, that's very helpful, I'll give them a call 'n order some disks.


If your netbook melts & burst's in to flames it'll more likely be DSGi's fault than UNR's!  

[pd.ryder]

Minor problem #1:

Error 404 when trying to locate UNR img file...! Got an image writer and have an SD card sitting here all expectant.

The linky from http://cdimage.ubunt...y-live/current/ just 404's - nothing there. Same via other routes too. I just end up back at the above page with a dead link.

I'll try again later in case its being updated or something.

[nliwilson]

pd.ryder, on May 12 2009, 15:56, said:

Minor problem #1:

Error 404 when trying to locate UNR img file...! Got an image writer and have an SD card sitting here all expectant.

The linky from http://cdimage.ubunt...y-live/current/ just 404's - nothing there. Same via other routes too. I just end up back at the above page with a dead link.

I'll try again later in case its being updated or something.

The University of Kent mirror has it here.

Popped in to PC World to see if they'd let me make an image from one of they're display machines (you never know until you ask!) they left me, a visibly disabled person, standing there for half an our and then offered to re-image the machine but they'd charge me for it! My reply was, shall we say, not complementary!

[pd.ryder]

Thanks - I managed to find another mirror. Got it now, but I'll probably leave the install until the morning when I'll have a fresh hangover to help things along

The last time I was in PCW I stood standing for many, many minutes until approached by the Floor Boss who informed me Chief Numpty would be along in a minute to assist me. Along came chief numpty but (a) didn't have the information I needed about using a Linux machine and ( was *far* too busy to let me use one to find out myself - "only if you're going to buy one..." was his stance. "But I don't know if I want to buy one yet... so feck off and I'll go elsewhere, tosser!" was my response.

They've no time for anything or anyone, except payday, of course.

[nliwilson]

OMFG I feel such a prat! I got so caught up in my annoyance that DSGi Product Development don't know how to make good use of Windows PE I lost sight of the fact that I do! Doh!!

If like me you've deleted/formatted your Windows partition but not your recovery partition, and you have a Windows install CD of one kind or another do the following;

1: Download BartPE builder
2: Use it to make a default BartPE boot disk image, it tells you how you will need a Windows install CD, preferably XP (obviously if you want to use the disk for more than this one job add any plugins you like)
3: Boot to your new PE boot disk
4: Open A43 file manager
5: Make a note of your drive partition letters, you'll need them in a mo, my 2 where C: for the Windows partition and E: for the recovery one
6: Format the Windows partition, needs to be NTFS with default allocation size and label'd XP
5: Run CMD and type the following (without the "") "E:\TGM\Utils\ImageX.exe /apply E:\HDD\WIMFiles\XP.wim 1 C: > E:\TGM\Imagexbart.log" ***Remember to amend the drive letters if and as needed!***

Congratulations, you just put your Advent 4211 back to factory default!

Addendum; There are several pe-built PE boot disks around, most named some variation of XP Live/XP USB Etc. that will allow you to skip steps 1 & 2. I wasn't going to mention them for 2 good reasons: 1: they're in breach of Microsoft's licence and 2: some come form some pretty questionable sources. Personally I'm ambivalent about breaching MS's licenses (for reasons that so many people have gone over so many times) but if you do download one make sure you virus scan anything & everything you download.

Edited by nliwilson, 13 May 2009 - 10:46 PM.