Category: windows

Posted on

A197XP Issues

I mentioned back in July that I was having problems with my (quite old now) Sony VAIO A197X. Back then I considered re-installing Windows, but never got round to it.

I don’t really want to abandon it, as it does have a lovely 17″ screen, 1920 x 1080 resolution, which makes it great for watching video.

Sometimes the DVD player does not work as expected sometimes.

Tonight I was watching BBC iPlayer, I watched Doctor Who and that worked fine, but trying to watch Being Human and it decided that was too much…

I think it may have got too hot.

The video froze, despite restarting the browser, I couldn’t get the video working.

In the end I turned it off and watching iPlayer on my Mac.

I think I will now need to reinstall Windows.

Posted on

Installed Parallels 4.0

Well my copy of Parallels 4.0 arrived from Amazon who are selling the boxed upgrade for just £32. I didn’t use the enclosed CD, just the latest version from the Parallels website and the serial number included in the box.

The install went fine, converting my Vista and Windows 7 images went fine and Windows 7 is working fine. However I did have issues with the conversion of the Windows XP image, with some WMI errors.

The new version of Parallels is an improvement on version 3.0, but still don’t like coherence mode (default) which just doesn’t seem right on a Mac, much prefer using Windows in a window.

Posted on

Installing Windows 7 on the Q1 Ultra

Though I initially had problems with the Samsung Q1 Ultra I have grown to like the UMPC, the main benefit being the five hour battery life (even longer with the powerbank).

Samsung Q1 Ultra

However the operating system has always been a bit of a pain, yup you’ve guessed it, it runs Windows Vista. Though the Q1 Ultra has 1GB of RAM, this really isn’t sufficient for Vista, and as a result boot times are too long, and there are performance lags which I blame on the OS.

I was seriously considering downgrading to Windows XP and to see if that would improve the performance. Now though I am thinking I might install the Windows 7 beta and see if that could improve the performance.

If all else fails, I will install Ubuntu!

Posted on

VMware Fusion 2 Beta

VMware Fusion 2 BetaThough very happy with Parallels, I have been interested in the performance of the main competition, VMware Fusion.

Get the best of both the Mac and PC worlds with VMware Fusion. With an intuitive Mac-native interface and a wide array of powerful features, VMware Fusion provides the most seamless way to run Windows applications on your Mac.

I am trying out the VMware Fusion 2 Beta on my iMac, it installed just fine as did Windows Vista.

I don’t do a whole lot in Windows, but for some stuff you need Windows such as GO!View for the PSP.

These OEM versions will work with VMware Fusion (and Boot Camp or Parallels). Though as OEM versions you won’t get any support from Microsoft, for that you will need to purchase the full retail versions.

Windows XP Home

Windows XP Professional

Windows Vista Ultimate

Note that Windows Vista Home can not be used with Parallels or VMFusion due it licensing restrictions.

Windows Vista Home Premium

Posted on

Why I like Parallels

So here I am installing Leopard on an external drive on my iMac and installing various applications. One application I use now and again is Parallels so that I can run Windows and Ubuntu on my Mac in a virtual machine.

One of the things I like about running an OS in a virtual machine is that I can just copy them from the internal drive to the external drive and do not need to worry about installing Windows again, basically it just remembers where it was when I closed it down previously – even though that was on a different drive running a different version of OS X.

Nice and easy.

Posted on

Leopard does a Vista on me…

In the past I have mentioned how sometimes Vista annoys me by doing what it wants, rather than let me get on with stuff, one example which particularly annoyed me was when I was downloading a file (a rather large file) and Vista decided that as I wasn’t actively involved with the computer it would shut itself down!

Now I did think that OS X would not be so selfish and would be more sensible.

Well was I wrong…

Okay OS X is nowhere near as bad as I have found Vista to be, it’s most certainly not perfect.

So what happened?

I had decided to install Leopard 10.5 on my iMac (on an external drive) and after installing from my Leopard install DVD, I went to Software Update to update to 10.5.4, which to my initial horror was a 560MB download, well that’s going to take some time, so I let it get on with it.

So you can imagine my annoyance when I came back to find that the iMac had fallen asleep!

I was downloading a file! No you were downloading a file, you knew you were downloading a file, yet you still fell asleep!

I will give OS X a little credit, at least when I resumed the download it didn’t start it again.

Posted on

XP SP3 on the A197XP VAIO

I have been having a few issues installing software on my (old) Sony A197XP VAIO, notably Firefox 3 and iTunes 7.7 (which I wanted to install for MobileMe).

So before I re-install Windows (and all the headaches that will cause me) I decided to try and install XP SP3.

This did install.

I was then able to install Firefox 3.01 and was pleased with that.

However iTunes 7.7 still failed to install.

Not sure where to go now, but looks like I may need to reinstall Windows.

Posted on

It took ages….

Took (what seemed) like a really long time this morning updating not just Parallels (to build 5608) but also updated the virtual installations of Windows XP and Vista I have on my iMac.

I updated Windows XP to SP3 which once I started I thought I wonder if SP3 would work with Parallels, so I downloaded the latest update.

While I was at it I also updated my virtual installation of Windows Vista as well – as that hadn’t been done in a while.

I know I know I should update when patches come out, but more often than not when I have updated it breaks something.

So far no problems, just it seemed to take ages…