Thursday, February 21, 2008

Vista, take 2

Well, yesterday's install of Vista Business solved the problem of getting Bibliofile to install its basic module. However, the support staff at TLC neglected to mention that the real incompatibility issue was with the PostgreSQL backend which for some reason they don't care to explain does not work under Vista. I can't tell if they mean that the two-versions-out-of-date Postgres 8.1.4 bundled in the Bibliofile installer is incompatible with Vista or if whatever glue code connecting Postgres to Bibliofile is incompatible (edit: it's the PG installer for 8.1.4 that's to blame). When I asked a TLC tech if it would be possible to manually upgrade the instance of Postgres to a more current version, he reacted as if I was planning to pour ketchup all over the inside of the laptop.

Our solution so far has been to repartition the HD and install XP to the second partition as a dual-boot system: when TLC manages to solve their problem, Vista's partitioning tool can reclaim the XP partition. Note to Microsoft: as much as I hate you, I have to admit a live partitioning tool that works inside its own boot partition is cool.

This decision required a fair amount of research: Toshiba technically supports XP, but doesn't go out of its way to announce how that works. However, forums are full of Satellite owners who have needed to downgrade to XP, and many have done their homework to find the XP drivers for the laptop's chipsets. After much searching and downloading, we think we've got the basics.

Interestingly while Vista correctly shrunk its own partition, the remaining free space wasn't correctly detected by the XP installer -- so we're formatting it NTFS as the E: drive and then trying again.

Update: Reformatting without the quick option and then reinstalling XP worked. What wasn't working correctly is the EasyBCD bootloader: the opening screen that shows you your boot choices didn't appear. According to the instructions above, you're supposed to install XP into the new partition, restart, see a corruption error, boot the Vista install disc to repair the installation and then everything will boot into Vista by default until you install EasyBCD and restart.

What happened was the Vista disc repaired the MBR, EasyBCD was installed, and when we booted into XP suddenly there was almost no space left on the partition despite no directories being full enough to account for it. Only the manual chkdsk /f was able to see what was corrupt and required us to start chkdsk on the next startup. chkdsk fixed the error, but we noticed that from this point onward the machine booted directly into the XP partition (which disk management shows as the boot partition) without showing the EasyBCD screen. Edit: it turned out that I had misread part of EasyBCD's config screen and set BCD to point directly to E: instead of the bootloader in C:. Once this was corrected it was fine.

We've got most of the XP drivers in and running, but the FN key does nothing in conjunction with the other keys. Sound works fine, ATI Catalyst drivers detect the 1200x800 screen, USB works (although it seems to think none of the ports are USB 2.0), and of course Bibliofile installed correctly.

Edit: had I paid more attention to the fact that the bundled restore DVD was labeled "A210/A215" and googled A210, I would have noticed that the A210 and the A215 appear to be nearly identical machines excepting that A210s are sold in Canada with only XP preinstalled and A215 are sold in the US with only Vista preinstalled. A210s are with one exception invisible on the US Toshiba support site. Visiting the Canadian Toshiba support site, I found all the XP driver software. A terrible audio stuttering problem was the result not of a wrong audio driver, but the wrong hotkeys driver, which was spiking 17% CPU usage at times. Uninstalling the hotkeys driver and installing the correct one resolved this problem. At this point, the only things not working are XP recognizing blank DVD media (it thinks it's CD media) and the multimedia keys along the top (which AFAIK are the same on the A210). Sound, video, wireless all fine in XP.

What I loved about Vista:
  • Built-in live repartitioning tool capable of growing and shrinking its own partition. It leaves GNU parted in the dust.
  • When it saw our Mythbox on the network, it immediately recognized it as a media server (with its own special icon) and begged us to install WMP and codecs to connect to it (which our time-tightened priorities did not allow).
What I liked about Vista:
  • It has a filesystem which is starting to look more and more like *nix ones: /Users/yourname at the top of the root directory instead of /Documents and Settings/yourname.
  • The search box allows you to enter commands.
What I hated about Vista:
  • Fiscally separating power users from regular users. I don't give a flying fuck what the EU said, this wasn't necessary, and if I wasn't in a position to get Business on a university discount I'd be calling a class action ambulance chaser by now.
  • UAC: the implementation, not the idea. OS X and Ubuntu require you to enter a password (which can be enough security on a publicly used box set to login without password at startup), and AFAIK set a cookie to remember you've authenticated for the next five minutes or so. A button which says "Do you really want to do this" over and over isn't security, it's Microsoft asking you to turn off the feature.