Windows XP Service Pack 3 is now available for download from Windows Update.
See the Technet article on installing Windows SP3. Note that they recommend having WinXP SP2 installed before installing SP3.
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Hiroko Mima has won the 2008 Miss Universe Japan. Hiroko, a university student and athlete from Tokushima in Western Japan, was selected from amongst 9 other beautiful ladies to represent Japan at the Miss Universe competition in Hanoi, Vietnam on July 14 later this year.
Having had the pleasure of meeting Hiroko, and two of the other competitors, Kana Anan and Yoshimi Sato, at the Emerald Ball in March, I can honestly say that the photos do not do them justice. The girls are much more beautiful in real life, and after putting up with 20 drunken Irish young lads at the Westin Hotel, they are great sports too.
More photos after the link
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The other day I was trying to get an unattended Windows XP CD to work in a virtual machine, but by mistake I ran it on my physical PC. I thought I cancelled it in time, before it had a chance to do any damage to my Windows installation, and I was able to continue using the PC as usual.
But when I rebooted my PC today it displayed the following error:
INF file txtsetup.sif is corrupt or missing, status 14.
Setup cannot continue. Press any key to exit.
I rebooted a couple of times and tried to hit F8 to get to a boot menu, but no luck. Normally if you time it right, hitting F8 before Windows XP starts loading will let you select Last Known Good Configuration or Safe Mode.
I booted from an XP installation CD and tried to get to the Microsoft Windows Recovery Console, but it simply said that it could not detect any hard disks and the only option was to press F3 to restart. That recovery console really sucks.
Next I tried the trusty Ubuntu live CD. For some reason it wouldnt boot into the normal Ubuntu, the graphics would go haywire, so I booted into the safe graphics mode. With Ubuntu I was able to see the Windows XP partitions and verified that all the files were there.
I did notice that the aborted XP installation had managed to add a line in BOOT.INI on the primary partition so I realise the boot files had been overwritten. With Ubuntu its easy to edit it, but rebooting into XP still gave the same “txtsetup.sif is corrupt or missing” error.
Next I tried a Windows 98 boot CD, but it couldnt see the NTFS partition with the XP installation.
I was about to try an fdisk /mbr but decided to try one more option with Ubuntu.
Heres what worked…
If you dont already have a Ubuntu live CD, download and burn one.
Download an Ubuntu ISO.
Use a CD ROM burning application like CDBurnerXP to burn the ISO to a DVD.
On a working Windows XP PC, copy BOOT.INI, ntldr and NTDETECT.COM from the C: drive to a USB stick.
If you dont see these files in your C: drive then start Windows Explorer. In the Tools menu, click Folder Options. Click the View tabb. Click to select “Show hidden files and folders” is selected, and remove the check from “Hide protected operating system files”.
Now copy the three files to an easily recognisable folder on your USB stick, if your stick is drive H:, copy the files into H:\Recover
Boot Ubuntu on the crashed PC. Boot into safe graphics mode.
Insert the USB stick. Ubuntu should recognize it.
Now copy those three files from the USB stick to your disk.
Reboot and hopefully your Windows XP is running again.
You may get warnings that some files are the wrong version.
I still have a feeling that booting from a Win98 CD and running fdisk /mbr from a DOS prompt work also have worked, but I’m not going to try it until the next time I get the same error.
If your PC has a floppy drive, you could make a boot floppy.
Insert a blank floppy disk into drive A:
Select Start > All Programs > Accessories > Command Prompt (or just press Windows Key+R and type CMD<code>). and press Enter.
Type <code>format a:
xcopy c:\boot.ini a: /h
xcopy c:\ntdetect.com a: /h
xcopy c:\ntldr a: /h
exit
The window will close when you type exit. Now remove the floppy disk and label it “Windows XP Boot Floppy”
Put this in your corrupted PC and boot up.
If you are luck, Windows should start.
Now open a Command Prompt and enter the following commands to overwrite your corrupted boot files with the files from the floppy.
xcopy a:\*.* c:\ /h
If you were able to get to a Recovery Console from your Windows XP CD, you ould try the following commands. Try one, reboot without the CD to see if it worked, then try the next.
fixmbr
fixboot
The diskpart command runs a tool that lets you play with your partitions. Recommended only for those who know what they are doing.
Android is an Operating System and application suite for mobile devices. It is being developed by the Open Alliance Project, with Google being a major partner so its is developing a lot of interest. The fact that Google has launched the Android Developer Challenge, which will provide $10 million in awards for mobile apps built on the Android platform probably has something to do with the amount of interest.
I decided to give it a go. Installing it and getting a simple application running on the emulator was a breeze. The installation instructions on the Android site were relatively straightforward, and the videos helped getting the application to work.
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Having trouble with your .NET framework? I had a difficult time getting Windows Update to install Hotfix KB928366 on my computer. No matter what I did, I couldn’t uninstall or fix the .NET Framework. After a lot of Googling and trying different suggestions, here is what worked for me.
How to re-install the .NET Framework 1.1
If this doesn’t work for you, here are additional instructions for repairing .NET version 1.1, 2.0 and 3.0.
You dont often see this amount of concentration where I work!
I love how they made it look just like a normal desktop printer, just really really big.
Imagine trying to buy new ink cartridges for this thing.
Note the flashing lights to warn folks that this is a MASSIVE printer.
Yes, thats a PC monitor on the right hand side.
Best-Quality mode: 600 dpi (apparent)
High Quality mode: 448 dpi
Production mode: 336 dpi
* Up to 400sqm/hr at 336 dpi.
* Up to 200 sqm/hr in true 448 dpi.
* Up to 100sqm/hr in apparent 600dpi.
* Prints 140 posters 1.5m X 1.8m per hour
* 100 billboards per eight hour shift
* 6-color printing.
Size (HWD): 3.25 x 9 x 10m (10.5 x 25 x 62ft)
Weight: 2,700kg (5,952lb)
Power Consumption: 41 KVA max.
An extremely funny skit on the ancient art of cork soaking.
The StatTraq plugin for Wordpress has a bug where the Year and Month time periods are not displayed correctly. Here is a fix for the problem.
Download this StatTraq Calendar Patch. Extract calendar.php from the file and copy it into your \wp-stattraq folder, replacing the file that already exists there.
Now when you check your StatTraq statistics, you will be able to select time periods by Year or Month correctly.