Events 15

This page and its sub-pages are some kind of a blog, or in other words, it is an ever-growing personal computing-related set of pages with important current news and events (at least important in my opinion), therefore these pages contain current (at that time and so now past) important events, personal computing related "stories", like for example completely new things that I have discovered from the last website update, information about my current system state, un-installations, re-installations of my operating systems, any errors I am coping with, software updates and configuration instructions and similar. It was started on [ 19.2.2005 ] with the file-caching problem - that lead me to a complete un-install my Windows XP/Pro SP1 - and its basic description and solution. The solution was re-installing Windows, particularly downgrading to the non-SP version (but of course, before that I've tried almost all the possible solutions/work-arounds). And luckily back then the installation with "Unattended" parameters worked; if you're really interested then rather read the first opening entry for details below at the bottom of that page.

Once again I will write just a short "events-entry" since if I would want to mention all the things (worth mentioning, that is) that happened from the last update, be it interesting discussions on "Ars OpenForum" forum and elsewhere (and other such things), I would need to spend like half and hour or even more to collect all the links, format the text etc. And one of the reasons for me not having much time is that from 1st October onward I am attending Informatics at TSC Kranj: http://www.tsckr.si/vss. This is the first "official" computing-related education (beside that ECDL course that I was attending during the summer mentioned in the previous "events-entry" dated 05.08.2009) that I am getting so far in my whole life.

The only exception (that is, the exception in mentioning the things that happened from the last site's update) will be the Case fan: blowing in or out in this situation:  http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/77909585/m/422001941041 thread and its predecessor Help me to figure out which fan is the right one:  http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/77909585/m/223002821041 that I created on "Ars OpenForum" forum, and "blog-entries" on my slovenian blog entitled Bah, racunalnik ne bo laufal na 1.68 GHz:  http://tadej.sopca.com/2009/09/21/bah-racunalnik-ne-bo-laufal-na-168-ghz, and the older one (a predecessor to the one above) entitled Moj racunalnik bo deloval s 400 MHz vec:  http://tadej.sopca.com/2009/08/06/moj-racunalnik-bo-deloval-s-400-mhz-vec. I am mentioning these because they are all related to my "Athlon XP2000+" processor running at lower frequency (1.3 GHz instead of 1.7 GHz) than it is capable of, and my failed attempts to fix/correct this problem.

05.08.2009

This time a very delayed "events-entry". You see, in the mean time I was attending European Computer Driving Licence (ECDL) computing classes (see "AGORA d.o.o. - Doma": http://www.agora.si and "AGORA d.o.o. - Moduli": http://www.agora.si/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=52&Itemid=75), and therefore I haven't got enough time to dedicate it to updating the website. Well and yes, I passed all the "modules" (the exam was on 22nd July 2009) with very good results. Namely, for four modules (of seven total) I got 100%, for one 98%, for one 95%, and for one 92%, while 75% was required for one to pass.

I won't be even mentioning the website's changes (honestly, there weren't so many), but I will only mention two other computing-related things. One thing is that my currently used CPU is actually "AMD Athlon XP2000+" (and not "AMD Athlon XP" or even only the most basic and oldest "AMD Athlon" type), and the other is that I realized that my processor was running at 400 MHz lower than it could. And that's because the BIOS was set to 100 MHz Bus speed and 1.3 GHz CPU speed instead of 133 MHz Bus speed and 1.7 GHz CPU speed as it is capable of, for details please see the Help me to figure out my processor type!!:  http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/77909774/m/992009750041 thread that I've opened on "Ars OpenForum" forum.

02.06.2009

Well, today I am announcing a big step forward, that is, the end of the "dial-up era" for me. Below this paragraph is the text from the initial post of mine from the thread titled No pagefile by default on my new netbook, is this OK?!:  http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/99609816/m/210008768931 that I've opened on "Ars OpenForum" forum, while I also posted a "blog-entry" on my slovenian blog that I've entitled Danes si pri Si.mobil-u kupil Dell Inspiron:  http://tadej.sopca.com/2009/04/19/prevarantski-programi-na-pgware-strani about all this.

As one of the last remaining dial-up users alive, I bought (well, it was for 1 EUR, so - ;) ...) a "Dell Inspiron 910" netbook model PP39S, processor Intel Atom N270 with 8 GB SSD MLC (whatever this MLC means) from my mobile-phone provider with a relatively fast Internet connection (and fixed price, which is the main point), so this means the end of "dial-up era" for me too, finally ...

Btw., this is of course only a temporary solution since my country's main phone/etc. operator "Telekom" has already (a week or so ago they finished with work) connected our house to optical cable.

But anyway, let's go on to my question: when I checked the OS's (it's Windows XP Home SP3) configuration I noticed that it's set to "No paging file". Therefore I changed this setting (since I remember reading, also here on Ars, that some apps require it to exist even if the respective machine has plenty of RAM) to initial size of 512 and maximal to 1024 MB.

So my question is basically: have I done the right thing or should I leave it at default setting (namely, is this the default setting for such computers with SSD drives) with no pagefile??!

-- shirker

And two other threads on "Ars OpenForum" forum related to my new netbook and its connection (also about using the UTP crossover cable to use LAN to connect my desktop computer to Dell netbook so that I can use Internet with it) are Internet connection sharing confusion:  http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/99609816/m/511001220041 and A strange problem with my LAN; DHCP related??:  http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/99609816/m/835001840041 threads.

12.05.2009

Again, a very short "events-entry" comming after the previous one just after twelve days. Since the last update (i.e. the one twelve days ago) I once again haven't done any important changes (again, I always do some things, like fixing errors/problems in the code, or spelling/grammatical errors etc., of course, only if I discover them during this time) worth mentioning, therefore I will only mention that I've once again changed (or better yet updated) the "expires" meta http-equiv element, namely, I changed it from "Sun, 31 May 2009 23:59:59 GMT" to "Mon, 31 August 2009 23:59:59 GMT", and that's because above in the website pages' headers there is this "revisit-after" meta element: "<meta name="revisit-after" content="60 days" />", which basically says that the website is usually updated on per-60-days basis. Well, and one more last thing related to website's code, I added some new text under the "CONFIGURATION OF INTERNET EXPLORER" article on "config2.html" page, which is mainly about security being relative (and different than safety), and about IE's attack vectors.

Finally, I am announcing here that I will soon post a "blog-entry" on my slovenian blog at this web-address: http://tadej.sopca.com on "Sopca" blog-portal, which will be about my personal milestone of reaching 40.000 points (and 170 finished/returned WUs) in a well-known and widespread DC project Folding@Home: http://folding.stanford.edu; by the way, you can read more about all this on the "projects.html" page. And here is also a link to my personal page for user or donator "shirker": http://vspx27.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype=userpage&username=shirker&teamnum=14 (that's my nick on "Ars OpenForum" forum), folding for our "Ars Technica Team Egg Roll" team.

01.05.2009

I am glad to finally start this newly created "events15.html" page with this first "events-entry". Again, since the last update I haven't done any really important things, again, that means except for those "standard" changes (as I call them) that I do on each and every update, be it a minor or a major one. I mean things/changes like for instance fixing any spelling/grammatical errors that I discovered in the mean time (since the last website's update), fixing layout problems, and any other errors/problems in the website's source-code. One such thins was for example that I've removed the "Disclaimer 2" text from the "about.html" page and added its content (see also the last paragraph below), or at least a part of it, to a completely new page "disclaimer.html". Then, I made the links inside the quoted text (i.e. the "blockquote" element) smaller with the addition of <span style="font-size: 11px; font-weight: normal;"> to better fit the text size. And there were numerous other such things. /UPDATE: Well, and later on this same day I did in fact make quite a few things worth mentioning. For instance, I totally re-written the /legal/policy.html page and added a completely new page /legal/disclaimer.html.

Actually I did one relatively important change: I updated the links pointing to the three .html files (namely, forums-posts-3.html, forum-posts-2.html, and forums-posts-1.html) containing links to threads on forums in which I've participated in on all the pages on this "events section" and in the "OPEN or GET" drop-down menu on "diverse.html" page, and additionally only on the "diverse.html" page, I updated the links to three other similar (meaning that they also contain links to for example "blog-entries" where I commented, links to threads on non-techy message boards etc.) .html files also contained in the mentioned pull-down menu (these were wikipedias.html, contributions.html, and participations.html), all of them hosted on the free eSnips file-hosting service. By the way, here is a link: http://www.esnips.com/user/tadej (and here is also a sort of an alternative one http://fb.esnips.com/user/tadej) to my profile page there.