kdmurray.blog

The crossroads of life and tech

Monthly Archives: August 2008

How To Slipstream Windows XP SP3

I’ve decided to go with Windows XP for my dual-boot environment on the MacBook.  Partly due to familiarity, but mostly due to the lower resource requirement.

In setting up this new environment, I needed to decide how to cope with my Windows XP disc being an original, pre SP1 disc.  The solution: Slipstream.

Slipstreaming allows you to create a Windows XP CD that has updates like the most current Service Packs.  In this case, I’ll be adding Service Pack 3.

There are lots of guides on how to do the Slipstream process, including these two on HowToHeaven and Invisibill.  These are great step-by-step tutorials that show you everything involved in the process.  But they’re also very manual.

The tool I’ve chosen to go with is nLite.  This slick little application provides the ability to not only Service Pack your XP installation, but apply lots of other custom features as well.  Here are the steps I went through for my Slipstreaming adventure.  (There is also a step-by-step guide on the nLite Website)

Installation Screen ShotStep 1: When running nLite is to show it where the Windows installation is located.  After that, you’ll need to specify a location for nLite to perform it’s magic.  I chose C:slipstream.

Windows Slipstream ScreenshotStep 2: The next phase is to select the options for your installation.  I’m a whole-hog kinda guy, so I elected to go with every option if for no other reason than to browse the options and screens.

Windows Slipstream Screenshot

Step 3: Pick your Service Pack.  Once you’ve selected a service pack and applied it, nLite will perform the Slipstream operation and integrate the service pack.

Windows Slipstream ScreenshotStep 4: Updates & Hotfixes.  The more that you can download and apply here, the fewer there will be to apply once the windows installation is completed.

Windows Slipstream ScreenshotStep 5: Select components to remove.  nLite gives you the opportunity to eliminate components from the final installation.  This can lighten not only the ISO, but also the final installation.  Beware removing too many options.  By eliminating support for hardware or drivers the usage of the installation will become more limited.  However, if you have a specific application in mind it can help to streamline the process.


Step 6: Unattended Install. The next screen provides the ability to streamline the installation for a smooth unattended install.  If you want to use this option, you’ll need your Windows XP CD key at this stage.

Step 7: Installer Options. This screen allows you to customize some of the behaviours of the installation process including boot-time messages and BIOS backup retention.  If you don’t understand an option, take the default.

Windows Slipstream ScreenshotStep 8: Tweaks. Wow.  This section has dozens upon dozens of options to tweak and adjust virtually every major setting in Windows.  And a whole bunch that aren’t so major.  Take your time with this and make sure to read the little captions for each option.  There are so many possibilities.

Step 9: Integrate all the changes.  nLite will begin to create the installation image, merging together all the changes you’ve selected.  This process will take quite a while.  On my machine it took about 10 minutes.

Windows Slipstream ScreenshotStep 10: Burn the ISO.  Set any last settings you want for the ISO, and click the Create ISO button to start writing the image.  Once the image is written, it can be installed to a VM (VMWare/VirtualServer) or burned to a disk for installation at a later time.

WordPress 2.6 – Restore the “Add Image” button

During the recent upgrade to WP 2.6 I noticed that the old “Add Image” button was missing.  This is something I use quite a bit because it’s quick and simple.  Call me old fashioned, but I don’t particularly care for the new Media-bar uploader.

After some searching on Google and the WordPress.org forums, I came across a relatively easy fix.  To restore this button, and add a few others, you can install the TinyMCE Advanced plugin.  TinyMCE is the editor that’s built in to WordPress’ visual editor.

Once the plugin is added, all the functionality you had before will be restored, along with a ton of cool new neato features!

Mars Phoenix Confirms Water on Red Planet

Earlier this week the Mars Phoenix rover made an astounding discovery.  It was finally able to confirm the presence of water ice.  The find in and of itself marks the first time that water has been confirmed for certain on any heavenly body other than our own azure sphere.

The Phoenix rover uncovered ice crystals and after NASA officials discovered that the crystals had sublimated in a matter of a few days, they decided to run more detailed tests on them — mainly to try melting the ice.

The University of Arizona also put up a good piece on their involvement with the project.

This means that there could, potentially, be organisms in that water if it can stay in liquid form long enough… really that’s the biggest barrier to life on Mars, the water ice sublimates so quickly in the direct heat of Martian daylight that organisms don’t have much chance to develop.

NASA’s official Mars Phoenix mission website has even stated that the mission will be extended by about a month due to the discovery.  It’s now slated to complete at the end of September.

The news is indeed exciting.  It wasn’t a complete surprise to find the ice on Mars as there had been previous evidence from satellite flybys of the Martian arctic.  Space.com has a more complete article on this story including quotes from officials involved in the project.

Investigating the ASP.NET MVC Framework

Over the past few months I’ve been hearing more and more about a new framework being developed by Microsoft and the ASP.NET community.  It’s something that will bring a very common coding practice from the Java world and that’s the pattern of the model view controller (MVC) framework.

Due to the covoluted nature of my own school experience, I haven’t had much in the way of formal exposure to MVC concepts.  In fact it wasn’t until about 18 months ago that I first heard the term when we were rolling out a new Java framework at work.  This was a pretty major shift in direction for my team as we’d been using ASP.NET and webforms to do web application development for the past few years.

The transition hasn’t been an easy one.  Most of the folks involved in the project are new to the company, new to the working world in general and the training on MVC was at a minimum.  (I’m leading a team to replace that framework now, but I’ll talk more about this in some future posts.)

So over the past few months I’ve been reading posts by Scott Guthrie and listening to every episode of the Polymorphic Podcast that I can get my hands on.  The PMP in particular has proven to be an excellent resource for information relating to the ASP.NET MVC framework.  Craig Shoemaker regularly brings on guests who are experts in the field of .NET development and key players in development of the framework.

Over the next few months (in amongst my myriad other projects) I want to take a closer look at the MVC framework and see what all the hype is about.  I need to figure out how to get a decent windows development environment up and running.  For that I’m thinking about returning to a Boot Camp setup to give me a bigger boost when running my Windows environment locally on the Macbook.

Since my new role doesn’t involve a lot of development work, I’m really looking forward to getting my hands dirty again, and diving under the hood once again.