Ranting Kenya

I had this bizarre issue for the last month or so. One day, I could no longer stream anything to either of my two Xbox 360s from Windows Media Center. All that would happen is instead of the actual playback, I would just get a black screen for any live or recorded tv.

I googled the net quite a bit, searched through various user forums, re-installed the extender a number of times, called Xbox technical support (pointless and frustrating), and nearly re-installed Vista.

Before I did that however, I did post in a couple forums my problem. And what do you know, I got response that worked.

Here’s the thread: http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?p=887638#post887638

Here’s the fix: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/811259/en-us

Turns out the solution was simple. Just reset the Winsock. Even though the auto-check showed no problems, and I could see all ten of the entries listed, I did the manual reset anyway. It worked.

Thanks to BadLag of the Digital Home Forums for the help.

So I finally got the speakers I’ve been drooling over for a couple years now. Nice black finish, top notch in every respect. All the positive reviews I’ve read about these speakers have been totally accurate. These things are pure quality.

The only thing I’d add to the comments and reviews that I don’t recall reading is that at low volume levels, you probably won’t notice a vast difference between these and some other relatively good computer speakers. But if you like to turn up the music a bit, these clearly stand apart from the others.

I recently upgraded my computer’s main hard drive. I didn’t want to just add more storage on a separate drive since much of my storage is taken up by Vista Media Center recordings. My music and videos are on a separate drive already. I just wanted a huge main drive.

So in the end, I’ve moved from a 250GB drive to a 1TB drive. Now cloning everything over wasn’t as easy as I had hoped, but it wasn’t too bad either. I thought I’d post a little bit about what I did and, which products I used to hopefully streamline someone else’s experience.

So let me list the stuff I used:

• SATA Source Drive (250GB Seagate Barracuda)
• SATA Destination Drive (1TB Western Digital Black)
• Windows Disk Management
• GParted
• Easeus Disk Copy
• InfraRecorder

Here’s the order of what I did:

1. Added new drive physically in computer, changed nothing on original. With SATA drive you don’t even have to configure a jumper or anything. Just find an empty bay and plug in the power and data cables.
2. Booted computer (Vista Home Premium in my case, though all of this would be the same on XP), and opened up the disk management tool.
3. Activated the new hard drive.
4. Downloaded both Easeus Disk Copy and GParted iso files, and burned them to CDs with InfraRecorder.
5. Booted from the Easeus Disk Copy disk I just created. Copied the whole drive sector by sector to the new disk, existing paritions and all.
6. Once Easeus is done copies, you have identical partitions on your new hard drive. There will also be the remainder of the free space on the new larger drive unallocated.
7. Rebooted the computer with the GParted disk is the drive. Once GParted is up and ready to go, I select the main parition on the new drive and choose the “grow” option. I drag that partition to fill the rest of that “unallocated space”.
8. Once that was done, I shut down the computer, disconnected the old drive, I swapped the data cables (not sure if this is necessary or not), and rebooted again.
9. When windows is starting back up, it’ll want to run some disk checks. I let them finish, and the computer rebooted normally.

And that’s it. Doesn’t sound like it takes very long, but the copying, formating, and growing of partitions each took over an hour on my machine, which is pretty powerful.

All in all, I’m pretty happy since I don’t have to hunt down all that software all over again and re-do all my personal settings.

Finally. Coming to Calgary soon I believe!

http://www.digitalhome.ca/content/view/3406/280/

Don’t let the title fool you, this isn’t a list. I’m just going to tell the story of my latest Telus internet experience. I post this not to speak poorly of one provider or another, but merely to report my most recent experience. I would also like to say that Telus has provided me the product I originally ordered without fail for nearly 3 years now. Also, writing this will help me remember all the events for when I call Telus to cancel my connection.

My debacle started back on January 19. I noticed on the Telus website that I was paying the price for their top speed DSL connection (6Mbps down, 1Mbps up), but receiving a connecting so inferior they didn’t even offer it any more (1.5Mpbs down, 256Kpbs up). So I called Telus to ask for their top service. I was fine paying what I was paying, I just wanted more speed. Nice of them to just upgrade my service for me. The CSR on the line was very helpful, everything was going great. They asked me if I wanted one of their new gateways to replace my modem and router. I asked if it was needed for the need speeds, he said no, so I said I’d keep what I have since it works exactly the way I want. At any rate, expect my service to be up to full speed in 24 hours.

Later that evening my internet connection went down completely. All the lights on my modem were still on (as in functioning correctly), so I assumed that they were flipping the switch. I was pretty happy with how things started to move so quickly, and I went to bed excited to try the new speed the next day.

I wake the next morning to no internet. That’s ok I suppose, the guy on the phone did in fact say 24 hours. So I went to work, and then I came home to no internet. Now I’ve decided to call tech support. As I’m dialing, I decided to do what I do for everybody when troubleshooting net connection, I power cycled the whole deal. Modem, router, and computer. Before I can get to an agent to troubleshoot, my whole system is back up as it was before to no net connection.

So I start working with the tech support guy. I hear all the usual stuff repeatedly. “Unplug the modem for a few seconds”, “Now unplug the router”, “Plug the computer directly into the modem.” Of course I do all of these things with no avail. Now I get put on hold while he contacts some other support someone. He comes back, we do all the same things again, plus add renew the IP on the computer etc. No internet. I get put on hold again. This time however, the agent spoke to someone who did something, now I have internet. Excellent.

So I do a speed test at speedtest.net. I’m on their 3Mpbs down service, not the full 6. I mention this to the tech, he’s says he doesn’t see their top service on my account, so I should call the CSRs again to re-order. Ok fine. So I do that. Everything should be ok. Later that night, my internet goes down again.

Now repeat the story with tech support again the next day, which is now Wednesday. This time however, I don’t have to re-order the high speed, they’re going to send a technician out to me on Friday. What time? They don’t set times, it’s an “all-day appointment”. How convenient. Then I remember since I’m in a townhouse that they generally do work at some common box for the whole set of units, so they probably won’t even need access to my house.

Anyway, I take the appointment and the day off. The guy comes by, and the internet it back. Not at the speed I ordered. He says to me he say that I ordered it and it should be in on monday. So I wait. By tuesday, still not the speed I ordered. So I call again, they say they didn’t see the top service on my account, so I re-order again. And again that evening the internet goes down.

So, a couple more phone calls to tech support, same issues, and in the end they want to send a tech guy to my house again. So I hold out for 3 or 4 days with no internet for the tech guy. I explained when I made this appointment that an “all-day” appointment is unacceptable. They agree to send the guy to me after 4pm. So I race home, get there at 4 to find a note on my door saying that he’s did something but was unable to get into the house to check the modem so upload may not work properly. I also says he was there at 2:50pm in the afternoon.

So I check my connection, I’m not getting my full down speed (just over half actually), and now I have the worst upload ever in my life (roughly 100 Kbps). So then I called Shaw to get cable internet.

So the cable guy was supposed to come to my house between 1 and 3pm. He was there early. He had everything he needed. We didn’t power cycle everything a million times. He brought the modem, signal amplifier, cables, splitter, everything and did all the work in probably 30 mins. Now I’m receiving service that faster than anything Telus even provides, and I’m pretty much hitting the advertised marks (they advertise 10 down 1 up and I’m getting like 98% of those numbers). He also informs me that in a couple months Shaw will be moving to Docsis 3 and I’ll be in for a nice surprise.

I would also like to note that he didn’t try to give me some stupid gateway, he just plugged the modem into my router. I’ve put DD-WRT on my router, and it has all sorts of crazy setting so that 2 XBox 360s, 5 computers all work correctly for streaming and Windows Media Center. He never even said the word router, he just plugged everything in. That’s exactly what he should do. Get a working connection to my house, let me handle what I do with it afterwards.

I haven’t cancelled Telus yet, I’ll be doing that later today. Perhaps that will be a seperate post.